City profiles
Andy Palmere Aston Martin has “pulled a handbrake turn” under the leadership of Andy Palmer, says the FT. Last week, the luxury British carmaker – which has been bankrupt seven times – recorded two notable moments: launching its latest car, the £120,000 Vantage, and posting its first consecutive four quarters of profit since at least 2008. “It was a great day,” says Palmer, who took over in 2014 after 23 years at Nissan. “It made all the bad days worthwhile.” Described as the perfect fusion of “British West Midlands industrialist” and “Japanese perfectionist”, Palmer is a “real car guy”, who “spent weeks sleeping at the office” while he fixed Aston, which now plans to float next year. With five major new cars expected before 2022, “we’re in harvest mode”, he says. If you were one of millions shopping on Amazon on Black Friday, congratulations, says Chris Isidore on CNN. com: “You helped make Jeff Bezos a $100bn man.” Bloomberg, which tracks the wealth of the world’s richest people, estimates that Amazon’s founder reached the “12-digit milestone” after making $2.4bn last Friday alone, when the stock “got a lift” from positive shopping reports. “Amazon’s shares are up 58% this year, enough to enrich Bezos by about $34bn” – and putting him well ahead of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the only other person thought to have cracked $100bn, when the dotcom bubble “briefly put him over the mark” in 1999. Having vied with Bezos all year for the title of “world’s richest person”, Gates is now firmly back in second place, with a “mere” $89bn.