By John Foley

If 2019 is like 2018, roughly 30,000 Americans will be killed by a bullet. And more big companies and investors will say publicly it’s time to make guns safer. If they say it in the right way, it might even make a difference.

Big institutions led the charge after the February massacre at a Florida high school. Investors compelled gunmaker Sturm, Ruger to publish a report — due in March — on the reputational and financial risks of gun violence. An identical motion passed at American Outdoor Brands . BlackRock chief Larry Fink asked firearms manufacturers in March to answer questions about their contribution to gun safety. State Street called for better safety measures. It’s a big shift from a group that was previously mum.

But gunmakers can mostly escape public censure by engaging with shareholders. They know BlackRock and Vanguard can’t dump their stock in protest because it’s held in index-tracker funds, whose primary duty is to generate decent returns. An example: BlackRock launched a guns-free fund for institutional clients. But it has attracted negligible interest.

Big banks have more power, and have started to use it. Citigroup no longer accepts gun retailers as clients unless they commit to basic safety policies and age limits on purchases. Bank of America won’t lend to makers of assault-style weapons commonly used in mass shootings. It earned the banks some enemies — a senator proposed denying federal business to banks with firearm policies. Yet both institutions are big enough to brush it off.

There’s room to go further. Around a dozen investors including the California Public Employees Retirement System teamed up in November to ask gun manufacturers and sellers to make products “safer, more secure and easier to trace.” There’s no reason bank chief executives couldn’t present a tougher, collective ultimatum. They could, for example, jointly pledge to deny commercial banking or corporate finance work to gunsmiths until universal background checks become law.

Now would be a good time, too, because one thing that can be predicted with tragic certainty is that 2019 will bring more mass shootings — like the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which killed 17 people and galvanized millions. As more people are harmed each year, getting tougher on companies whose products harm should only get easier.

BY UNA GALANI

Indian unicorns will feast on richer pastures in 2019. Restaurant search firm Zomato, ride-hailing firm Ola and hotel-rooms aggregator Oyo are leading the charge overseas by the country’s largest tech companies. A complex home market, a big diaspora and deep-pocketed backers will ensure success rarely achieved by Asian startups in farflung lands.

Those that have made it on the subcontinent, notching up valuations of over $1 billion in perhaps the most challenging and diverse of large markets, are agile, and well placed to scale up elsewhere. Their technology is unusually robust, suitable for patchy telecom coverage, offering multiple payment methods and a host of services for different income groups.

Familiarity with English helps, too. Ola, for one, is pushing into Australia and Britain. Innovations like a loyalty programme have helped keep at bay its $76 billion U.S. rival, Uber. Oyo is adding the equivalent of an entire AccorHotels chain, Europe’s largest, to its stock of rooms each year. It expects to be the biggest hotel brand in the world by 2020, as it advances into China.

Ola claims 150 million regular riders across 110 local cities, a large chunk of the market it can reasonably service, given less than one third of India’s 1.3 billion people have a smartphone. That’s more than the population of the United States, but low internet penetration remains a brake on growth for platforms leveraging technology to provide easy transport, clean hotels or a trendy place for dinner. By contrast, China’s Didi was in many more cities before it ventured overseas. The support of wealthy foreign investors like Japan’s SoftBank, its affiliate Vision Fund, and China’s Ant Financial, is also encouraging Indian startups to think big.

Crucially, richer markets will help to plump the bottom line to win at home too. Even if the cut of fees demanded by Zomato or Ola is close to the take-rate in India, the absolute amount they can pocket per a delivery or taxi ride is higher almost anywhere else, because of the country’s low per-capita income. There’s a second windfall too: Australians eat out about 10 times more every month than a middle-class Indian. For many of these success stories, pushing overseas is as much about survival as it is about ambition.

First published Dec. 18, 2018.

BY GEORGE HAY

Who replaces Ivan Glasenberg? The internal succession battle at Glencore has investors gripped. The 61-year-old former coal trader, after all, turned the commodities trader into a mining heavyweight. He is still its second-largest shareholder and, since a 2011 listing, its public face. With the group in flux as 2019 dawns, Glasenberg will be tempted to get on the front foot.

Apart from succession, the board has two big challenges. One is handling the consequences of a U.S. Department of Justice probe into whether the group broke anti-bribery and anti-money laundering rules from 2007 onwards in Venezuela, Nigeria and Congo. The other is the company’s steep valuation discount. Putting Glencore’s $7.5 billion of estimated 2019 free cash flow on rivals’ 8 percent yield, the group should be worth $94 billion. After shares dipped by nearly a quarter in 2018, it’s actually worth $51 billion.

Replacing the top man is not straightforward. To date, Glencore’s approach has been Darwinian, with bosses ousted from below when they start fading. The retirement of copper trading boss Telis Mistakidis suggests space will clear for younger executives like nickel trading head Kenny Ives and newly appointed coal mine boss Gary Nagle. Glasenberg says he wants “a 45-year-old” to take the helm. Yet none of that anoints a clear successor.

Glasenberg could stay for another five years, but the recent changes suggest the company feels some pressure. As the U.S. investigation unfolds, the risk is current top managers get ensnared. If the boss feels this might involve him, it makes sense to leave sooner.

Meanwhile, even Glencore loyalists will want a better idea of its future shape before taking over. It won’t be the same group Glasenberg took over in 2002, and parts of the business — assets in troublesome Congo, for example — could yet be sold off, either as part of any future U.S. settlement or to hedge against further regulatory discomfort.

There’s also a chance of even bigger change. At recent valuations Glasenberg could finance a repurchase of all group shares not already held by managers or Qatar with around 3.5 years of free cash flow, Bernstein reckons. Given all the uncertainties, it’s possible that Glencore exits 2019 with a new look, a new boss, or both.

First published Dec. 13, 2018.

BY SWAHA PATTANAIK

Mario Draghi’s successor may not be the most important appointment at the European Central Bank in the year ahead. Most of those in the running to replace the Italian as president lack his creativity in tackling existential problems, such as a breakup of the euro. Others will have more scope to sway the debate. Ireland’s Philip Lane, who is in pole position to take over as chief economist from Peter Praet, is the sort of freethinker who would have outsized influence, especially in the next economic downturn.

Draghi’s departure from the ECB, scheduled from the end of October, removes a key figure. Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau, Finland’s former central bank chief Erkki Liikanen or his replacement Olli Rehn, and Klaas Knot of the Dutch central bank are all potential successors. Benoît Coeuré, the Frenchman who is already on the ECB’s Executive Board, and Deutsche Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann are also contenders. However, ECB rules may prevent the former from throwing his hat in the ring while the latter may be too divisive given his past criticisms of Draghi’s policies.

Besides, merit will not be the decisive factor. National haggling over who gets the job will be inextricably linked to other vacancies, such as the next president of the European Commission. And while Draghi’s potential replacements are respected policymakers, few have so far matched his inventiveness.

That is why Lane would be an interesting choice as chief economist. The former academic supports the creation of so-called European Safe Bonds, synthetic IOUs that would be backed by the sovereign debt of all European Union countries. The idea, designed to break the “doom loop” between banks and national governments, has drawbacks. Still, it shows the sort of ingenuity that will come in handy when the euro zone economy inevitably slows.

With official rates still in negative territory and likely to rise slowly, there will be little room to cut when stimulus is next needed. More bond buying or long-term loans may not do the trick. Lane is more likely to dream up a cunning scheme to stimulate the economy. The sidekick may matter more than the next president — unless he turns out to be the dark horse that gets the top job.