Business Strategy

IndiGo (InterGlobe Aviation Ltd) CRISIS WASN’T IN THE SKIES. IT WAS IN THE LEADERSHIP CABIN. Three things stood out. One: Employees were left alone to face furious customers. No leader should ever let that happen. If you don’t stand by your people in a storm, don’t expect them to stand by your customers in the sun. Customer experience collapses the moment employees feel abandoned. Two: In any crisis, honesty is the only strategy that works. This time, the communication wasn’t transparent. When leaders hide the full picture, years of goodwill can disappear overnight. A crisis can earn trust, but only if you tell the truth. Three: The belief that “we are too big to be ignored” has ended more companies than competition ever has. Customers always have a choice. And if they don’t, they will create one. We shouldn’t watch the Indigo crisis like spectators. This is a reminder for every leader to build their own crisis blueprint. Because crises will come, when they do, your response becomes your reputation. There is more to business than profits. There are people, trust, and how you show up when it matters most.

Who are Europe’s biggest banks – and what drives their standing? 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 — Spanish banks lead because Santander and BBVA earn a big share of profits in faster-growing markets like Latin America and the US - diversification investors reward more than purely domestic scale. — BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole run some of the world’s largest balance sheets, yet trade below much smaller peers - a reflection of heavy regulation, thin margins, and close government ties that weigh on valuations. — Nordic banks earn an efficiency premium: lean cost structures, steady profitability, and reliable dividends lift valuations well above what balance sheet size alone would suggest. — German banks remain valued below their scale, reflecting years of restructuring and modest returns, even as Deutsche Bank has made real progress in stabilising profitability. — Central and Eastern European banks such as OTP and PKO benefit from faster-growing domestic markets, while Erste leverages strong positions across the region - giving CEE lenders momentum that Western peers often lack. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 — EU banks are among the most capitalised globally, with strong CET1 ratios and liquidity buffers. Yet they trade at lower price-to-book multiples than US peers - reflecting investor scepticism about long-term profitability. — European banks typically deliver return on equity (RoE) in the 7–9% range, versus 12–15% for US peers. Higher capital requirements, fragmented markets, and slower revenue growth explain the gap. — Europe still lacks a true single banking market. Barriers to cross-border mergers keep the system dominated by national champions rather than continental players, limiting scale efficiencies. — Nordic banks lead in digital adoption; Southern European banks leverage global footprints. But across the board, EU banks face margin pressure from fintechs, Big Tech, and payment specialists. — ESG and green finance are rising priorities, with French banks in particular positioning themselves as leaders in sustainable lending and investment. — Cost-cutting and restructuring remain central themes, especially in Germany and the Netherlands.   Opinions: my own, Graphic source: MarketCapWatch Subscribe to my newsletter: https://lnkd.in/dkqhnxdg

Apartment operators are nervous. You can see it in the latest rent data. After six straight months of increased rent momentum nationally, year-over-year rent growth has backtracked a bit in each of the past two months -- coinciding with prime leasing season. Nationally, YoY effective rent growth eased from 1.05% in March to 0.74% in May. The modest backtracking comes DESPITE strong absorption, steady occupancy rates, and improved affordability (declining rent-to-income ratios). We talk a lot about weak consumer sentiment. But it's not just consumers. Sentiment is a powerful variable -- even if one hard to measure -- among operators setting rents. When operators are nervous, they'll likely sacrifice on rents (or ramp up concessions) to protect occupancy. It's happening most clearly in the high-supplied markets across the Sun Belt and Mountain regions, BUT we're also seeing stalled momentum in the lower-supplied Midwest and Coastal markets. So while it was the 40+ year high in supply that pushed rents down in the last two years (even amidst strong demand), it's not just about supply anymore. Washington, D.C., is a prime example of this trend. There's been a lot of nervousness about the D.C. market due to DOGE cuts and federal layoffs. And yet apartment occupancy rates have held strong, improving 50 bps since January and now topping 96%. Rent-to-income ratios among new lease signers (in professionally managed, market-rate apartments) have fallen to 23.1%, according to RealPage data. The REITs with D.C. exposure have all reported solid demand and healthy collections there, too. And yet: Rent growth in D.C. is backtracking more than most of the country. Year-over-year effective rent growth eased from 3.45% in March to 2.35% in May. In most lower-supplied Coastal and Midwest markets, we're seeing operators just hold steady on rents rather than continue the steady upward push we saw previously. And remember: This is the time of year we typically see rents accelerate. In the higher-supplied Mountain and Sun Belt markets, reduced effective rent momentum is primarily driven by increased concessions. Among stabilized apartments (non lease-ups) here utilizing concessions, the average discount increased from 8.9% of asking rent in March to 10.1% in May. That's more than one month "free" on a 12-month lease. Markets with the most deceleration in effective rent change over the past two months include a mix of lower-supply and higher-supply markets: Las Vegas, Riverside, Baltimore, Austin, Memphis, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Washington DC, Denver and Orlando. Markets immune to the trend (with continued momentum) include San Francisco, where sentiment was previously so low it could only go up. There's no other reasonable explanation for slowing rent momentum than nervous operators worried about weak consumer confidence and the parade of headlines warning of a potential recession. Where do rents go from here? Thoughts? #apartments #rents

Amazon kept getting complaints – but the executive team didn’t know why, so Jeff Bezos called customer services on speaker in front of everyone… In the late 1990’s, Amazon was growing fast. Every week, Jeff Bezos gathered his leadership team for their most important ritual: the Weekly Business Review. One day, the head of customer service proudly presented a slide: “Average phone wait times: 59 seconds.” Tick - move on to the next item. Jeff paused. A number of Amazon’s customers were not happy. He knew this because he maintained and read a public email account. Customers would email him directly, Jeff would forward on to the appropriate executive with a simple “?” for follow up. But his customer service leader was saying everything was rosy. Something didn’t add up… So right there, in the middle of the meeting, Jeff did something radical: Placing the call on speaker, with the entire executive team watching, he picked up the phone and called Amazon’s customer support line… The room went silent. 60 seconds passed. Then 2 minutes. Then 5 minutes. Still no answer. After 10 minutes of hold music - still nothing. “It was a really long time,” Jeff recalled. “More than 10 minutes.” In a flash, the metric they’d been using to reassure investors and guide operations collapsed. The problem? The data wasn’t wrong – but it was measuring the wrong thing. The metric measured average wait time for answered calls, ignoring the calls that never got picked up. That one moment rewired Amazon’s entire approach to measurement, feedback, and truth. Jeff didn’t just want favorable data, he wanted reality. The result? Amazon rebuilt its customer service from the ground up - and made customer service a core part of its moat. Reflecting on that meeting, Jeff said: “When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right.” 👉 Enjoyed this story? Subscribe for one great real life finance story a week: BizStory.co

Sustainability Services Ecosystem Map 🌎 This diagram, developed by Giki, offers a structured view of the growing ecosystem of organizations and platforms supporting sustainability. Its relevance today is undeniable, particularly as regulatory pressure, investor scrutiny, and stakeholder expectations accelerate. The sustainability landscape is growing increasingly complex. Companies are no longer relying on a single advisor or platform but are engaging with a wide range of actors, from disclosure bodies to emissions software providers, capacity-building networks, and global initiatives. This map organizes the ecosystem into five service categories: Measurement and Disclosure, Capacity Building and Engagement, Strategy and Net Zero Transition, and External Stakeholder Relationships. Each plays a distinct role in supporting the design, implementation, and tracking of sustainability strategies. In the measurement space, frameworks, standards, rating systems, and software tools coexist to support robust disclosure practices. Understanding their scope and interconnections is critical for building consistent and reliable reporting processes. In the consulting and advisory realm, various firms provide strategy development and transition planning, often acting as integrators across tools, frameworks, and data systems. Their role is central in operationalizing sustainability commitments. The capacity-building and engagement segment includes platforms focused on employee activation, public education, and behavioral change. These initiatives help embed sustainability into organizational culture and broader stakeholder engagement. Global initiatives and offset providers help align ambition across sectors while offering access to shared methodologies, benchmarks, and mechanisms for emissions reduction or removal. Their influence extends across policy, market signaling, and credibility. As sustainability becomes a core business function, it is essential to map out the ecosystem of support available. Knowing the distinct role of each actor allows organizations to build the right partnerships and infrastructure to deliver credible, impactful outcomes. #sustainability #sustainable #business #esg

In the U.S., you can grab coffee with a CEO in two weeks. In Europe, it might take two years to get that meeting. I ’ve spent years building relationships across both U.S. and European markets, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: networking looks completely different depending on where you are. The way people connect, build trust, and create opportunities is shaped by culture-and if you don’t adapt your approach, you’ll hit walls fast. So, if you're an executive expanding globally, a leader hiring across regions, or a professional trying to break into a new market-this post is for you. The U.S.: Fast, Open, and High-Volume Americans love to network. Connections are made quickly, introductions flow freely, and saying "let's grab coffee" isn’t just polite—it’s expected. - Cold outreach is normal—you can message a top executive on LinkedIn, and they just might say yes. - Speed matters. Business moves fast, so meetings, interviews, and hiring decisions happen quickly. But here’s the catch: Just because you had a great chat doesn’t mean you’ve built a deep relationship. Trust takes follow-ups, consistency, and results. I’ve seen European executives struggle with this—mistaking initial enthusiasm for long-term commitment. In the U.S., networking is about momentum—you have to keep showing up, adding value, and staying top of mind. In Europe, networking is a long game. If you don’t have an introduction, it’s much harder to get in the door. - Warm introductions matter. Cold outreach? Much tougher. Senior leaders prefer to meet through trusted referrals—someone who can vouch for you. - Fewer, deeper relationships. Once trust is built, it’s strong and lasting—but it takes time to get there. - Decisions take longer. Whether it’s hiring, partnerships, or leadership moves, things don’t happen overnight—expect a longer courtship period. I’ve seen U.S. executives enter the European market and get frustrated fast—wondering why it’s taking months (or years!) to break into leadership circles. But that’s how the market works. The key to winning in Europe? Patience, credibility, and long-term thinking. So, What Does This Mean for Global Leaders? If you’re an American executive expanding into Europe… 📌 Be patient. One meeting won’t seal the deal—you have to earn trust over time. 📌 Get introductions. A warm referral is worth more than 100 cold emails. 📌 Don’t push too hard. European business culture favors depth over speed—respect the process. If you’re a European leader entering the U.S. market… 📌 Don’t wait for permission—reach out. People expect direct outreach and initiative. 📌 Follow up fast. If you’re slow to respond, the opportunity moves on without you. 📌 Be ready to show value quickly. Americans won’t wait months to see if you’re a fit. Networking isn’t just about who you know—it’s about how you build relationships. #Networking #Leadership #ExecutiveSearch #CareerGrowth #GlobalBusiness #US #Europe

Scaling from 50 to 100 employees almost killed our company. Until we discovered a simple org structure that unlocked $100M+ in annual revenue. In my 10+ years of experience as a founder, one of the biggest challenges I faced in scaling was bridging the organizational gap between startup and enterprise. We hit that wall at around 100~ employees. What worked beautifully with a small team suddenly became our biggest obstacle to growth. The problem was our functional org structure: Engineers reporting to engineering, product to product, business to business. This created a complex dependency web: • Planning took weeks • No clear ownership  • Business threw Jira tickets over the fence and prayed for them to get completed • Engineers didn’t understand priorities and worked on problems that didn’t align with customer needs That was when I studied Amazon's Single-Threaded Owner (STO) model, in which dedicated GMs run independent business units with their own cross-functional teams and manage P&L It looked great for Amazon's scale but felt impossible for growing companies like ours. These 2 critical barriers made it impractical for our scale: 1. Engineering Squad Requirements: True STO demands complete engineering teams (including managers) reporting to a single owner. At our size, we couldn't justify full engineering squads for each business unit. To make it work, we would have to quadruple our engineering headcount. 2. P&L Owner Complexity: STO leaders need unicorn-level skills: deep business acumen and P&L management experience. Not only are these leaders rare and expensive, but requiring all these skills in one person would have limited our talent pool and slowed our ability to launch new initiatives. What we needed was a model that captured STO's focus and accountability but worked for our size and growth needs. That's when we created Mission-Aligned Teams (MATs), a hybrid model that changed our execution (for good) Key principles: • Each team owns a specific mission (e.g., improving customer service, optimizing payment flow) • Teams are cross-functional and self-sufficient,  • Leaders can be anyone (engineer, PM, marketer) who's good at execution • People still report functionally for career development • Leaders focus on execution, not people management The results exceeded our highest expectations: New MAT leads launched new products, each generating $5-10M in revenue within a year with under 10 person teams. Planning became streamlined. Ownership became clear. But it's NOT for everyone (like STO wasn’t for us) If you're under 50 people, the overhead probably isn't worth it. If you're Amazon-scale, pure STO might be better. MAT works best in the messy middle: when you're too big for everyone to be in one room but too small for a full enterprise structure. image courtesy of Manu Cornet ------ If you liked this, follow me Henry Shi as I share insights from my journey of building and scaling a  $1B/year business.

We analyzed over 13,600 investor portfolios and ranked the largest 250 PE investors in Europe (300+ hours of research) Congratulations to all the leaders: 🥇 CVC (managing a total enterprise value of €70bn across Europe) 🥈 KKR (€66bn) 🥉 EQT Group (€61bn) Other investors in the top 10 include Blackstone (€58bn), Cinven (€45bn), Ardian (€41bn), The Carlyle Group (€33bn), TDR Capital (€32bn), Advent (€32bn) and Bain Capital (€31bn). Collectively, the top 250 private equity firms manage an EV of €1.7tn in Europe. A few other insights from the data: 1. Investors established in the 1990s or before manage 77% of the total EV 2. The top 25 investors manage roughly the same EV as the next 225 combined 3. Europe 250 investors have an avg. EBITDA of €94m and manage 26 companies each 4. German HQ’d investors are underrepresented in the ranking with just 3% of total EV 5. London is home to 50 of the top 250 investors, followed by Paris (32) and New York (21) 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 - Hg (TMT) - CVC (Services and Industrials) - EQT Group (Science & Health) - KKR (Energy & Materials)  - Cinven (Financial Services) - TDR Capital (Consumer) Services, Consumer, and TMT are the largest PE markets by sector. Notably, Hg in TMT and TDR Capital in Consumer predominantly target those sectors, representing 71% and 69% of their portfolio, respectively. Compared to European investors, North American investors overweight TMT, Financial Services and Energy & Materials. They underallocate to Services, Industrials and Healthcare. 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 Hg, Cinven and Astorg stand out with high-growth, high-margin portfolios. CD&R, TDR Capital and PAI Partners rank among the largest employers in Europe given their large retail/consumer portfolio. Waterland Private Equity stands out as a big buyer of family-owned businesses. ________ 𝗙𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 Tons of more insights and charts in the full analysis: 💡List of top 250 investors 💡Sector and Regional rankings 💡Portfolio insights (Growth, holding periods, and more) 💡Detailed methodology Get it here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/ezekm4MJ #investors #pe #europe #insights

The shift from seats to agents pressures SaaS margins. At the same time, the longstanding practice of getting enterprise customers to pre-commit and also prepay for functionality they may never deploy will get harder as CIOs look to free budget for their own LLM costs. To weather the storm, some SaaS companies have increased prices. This boosts revenue and margins in the short-term but can't be done repeatedly and creates even greater scrutiny over shelfware as procurement teams right-size and shift contracts to "pay as you go." To achieve sustainable growth, SaaS companies need to become hyperefficient at sales and marketing. Here are common ways to do so and who's doing it well: 1. PLG. Shopify and Atlassian exemplify efficient go-to-market based on product-led growth with free trials, low-friction upgrades and upsells. Their sales teams only need to get involved in the biggest opportunities at the largest accounts; every other step in acquisition, commercial transaction, activation, onboarding, and growth is self-service and automated. 2. Vertical SaaS. Guidewire Software and Veeva Systems are laser-focused on insurance and life sciences, respectively. Rather than casting a wide net, they spear-fish with deep domain knowledge and purpose-built solutions for that industry's specific workflows and regulatory requirements. Guidewire doesn't need to buy Super Bowl ads– their annual customer conference is the Super Bowl for property & casualty insurance executives. Nearly zero GTM effort is wasted– unsurprisingly they're the two most efficient on the list. We modeled Hearsay Systems after both these companies, and this focus allowed us to win incredible market share among Fortune 500 banks & insurers despite only raising $60M in totality. 3. Relocate operations to lower-cost regions and AI. This is private equity's favorite playbook to take costs out of companies they buy. Field sales continues to shift more to Zoom, which means you can hire AEs anywhere. Inside sales contributes a greater % of revenue as PLG motions are established. AI handles top-of-funnel leads qualification and generating marketing content and campaigns. 4. Focus on gross revenue retention. Because of high customer acquisition costs in #SaaS, leaky buckets are margin killers. Use LLMs to help customer success teams analyze product usage, segment cohorts, and identify opportunities to increase value realization. Put in guardrails to prevent sales reps from overselling an account, as doing so only creates churn in the next renewal cycle. 5. Introduce another product line. This only works if your new product has the same buyer as your existing products. Many SaaS acquisition pro formas fail to actualize for this reason, as it's not actually feasible to have the same AE sell both old and new products. Every SaaS company right now needs to double down on one or more of these levers in the AI era.

Tesco’s share price is up almost 50% in the last two years. The business is on a roll, reporting strong financial performance in the latest update which I recently discussed with BBC News. ➡ Strong Financial Performance: 💠Retail like-for-like sales up 2.9%, with UK (+4.0%), ROI (+4.7%), and Central Europe (+0.6%) 💠Adjusted operating profit increased 10.0% to £1,555m 💠Market share reaches 27.8% - highest since January 2022 ➡ Omnichannel Excellence: 💠Large stores leading with 4.2% growth 💠Digital sales surging - online up 9.3%, now 13.5% of UK sales 💠Whoosh rapid delivery expanding to 1,460 stores 💠1.3M online orders per week ➡ Digital & Loyalty Innovation: 💠Clubcard penetration reaching new heights: UK 82%, ROI 85%, CE 87% 💠4.9M customers receiving personalised 'Clubcard Challenges' 💠Growing retail media platform showing strong advertiser engagement What's fascinating about Tesco's performance isn't just the numbers - it's the sophisticated ecosystem play that's emerging. Here's why I believe Tesco are in such a commanding position: 📲 Data Monetisation Tesco isn't just running a retail media network; they're orchestrating the UK's largest closed-loop retail ecosystem. With 23M Clubcard households, they've created a virtuous cycle: customer data drives personalisation, which increases engagement, which generates more data. Their partnership with dunnhumby transforms this into a powerful advertiser proposition - true closed-loop measurement across online and offline touchpoints. This is retail media 2.0. What's more, retail media typically delivers 60-70% margins, compared to traditional grocery retail's 2-5%. By building this high-margin revenue stream, built on strong tech underpinnings, their media tech proposition has become a key strategic asset boosting their valuation. It's a page out of the Amazon/Walmart's media businesses playbook where this part of the business is valued at multiples of their retail operations. 🎯 Core Business Focus The 4.0% like-for-like growth tells a deeper story about strategic discipline. Over the past decade, Tesco has systematically simplified its business model - exiting non-core markets and doubling down on what they do best: food retail with a magic sprinkle of data. It’s been fascinating to see how sometimes doing less allows businesses to achieve more. 🤖 AI-Powered Customer Centricity The deployment of AI to analyse shopping patterns isn't just about efficiency - it's about reimagining the customer relationship. By using predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs and suggest relevant products, Tesco is moving from reactive to predictive retail. In my view, the next stage of personalisation. These results showcase Tesco's ability to balance traditional retail strength with digital innovation while maintaining strong market leadership.