Waterstones: a bookseller saved by letting shops act like independents
Bought for £53m in 2011 while losing money, Waterstones was back in profit by 2016 after James Daunt let shops choose stock and stopped…
Volkswagen: one modular toolkit for dozens of models across its brands
VW launched its MQB toolkit in 2012 expecting 20% lower production costs; it built over 32 million cars in ten years, yet the VW…
Volkswagen: a hidden emissions cheat that cost more than €31bn and pushed a carmaker towards electric
Software that ran full emissions controls only on test was found in 11 million VW diesels; a €6.5bn provision grew to €31.3bn by 2020…
Unilever: a long-term sustainability plan meets short-term investors
Unilever's 2010 plan set about 50 targets to double sales and halve its footprint, survived a $143bn Kraft Heinz bid in 2017, then saw…
Rolls-Royce: from pandemic rescue to a profit rebuild
After a £4.2bn cash outflow in 2020, Rolls-Royce raised £7.3bn and cut 9,000 jobs; a new chief executive then lifted operating profit to £3.5bn…
Rolls-Royce: selling hours of flying instead of engines, and what that meant when the planes stopped
Rolls-Royce sold engines by the flying hour. When 2020 flying fell to 43% it lost £2bn; repricing and durability work then lifted civil margins…
Norwegian Air: a low-cost long-haul push that ended in a smaller airline
Norwegian turned down two IAG approaches in 2018, then lost its long-haul network in the pandemic and came back as a smaller, profitable Nordic…
Nespresso: how Nestlé kept a premium coffee business growing after its patents ran out
Nespresso built a closed capsule system sold through its own club and shops, then met the 2012 patent expiry with lawsuits, French commitments and…
Levi Strauss & Co.: a jeans maker that closed its own factories and managed suppliers instead
As sales fell from US$7.1bn to US$4.1bn, Levi's shut its last North American plants in 2003 and moved its sewing to contract factories in…
Lenovo: a Chinese PC maker that bought IBM’s PC arm and became the world’s largest
Lenovo paid US$1.25bn for IBM's PC division in 2004, came through two restructurings and became the world's largest PC seller by 2013, then bought…
