Ping An: How a Chinese insurance firm became a tech giant (A)

GENEVA (SWITZERLAND), AUGUST 2021. There was a lot at stake for Sébastien. This was the culmination of his 18-month NCA supported search journey to find a company to acquire. Instead of a single target, he was now faced with the prospect of acquiring 4 separate companies at once, consolidating them into a group. One, SAS, was bigger than the others but also faced significant financial issues. Hopefully he had identified three additional companies as acquisition targets, all profitable and with low levels of debt but individually a bit too small. Should he pursue all three as a single deal or add SAS for a four-company deal? In a last-ditch effort to figure out the best deal configuration, he ran some simulations about the potential returns of the group with and without the SAS turnaround. With those projections in hand, it was time to finalize the management buy-in proposal to present to the investment committee the following week.

Now in its eighth year, the 2024 IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking measures the capacity and readiness of 67 economies to adopt and explore digital technologies as a key driver for economic transformation in business, government, and wider...

In the 2010s, card processing – Mastercard’s flagship service – started showing signs of commodification as new, nimble players (typically, fintech startups thriving on digital) entered the payment processing space, and customer preferences evolved beyond plastic cards and traditional contact payments. To re-energize its central position and its ability to capture value, Mastercard – as the incumbent – had to make bold decisions. The case details Mastercard’s approach to conceptualizing and building a global platform ecosystem that upholds the principles and design elements of modularity (i.e. interoperability and scalability) and optionality. Today, Mastercard's services, based on application programming interfaces (APIs), integrate with a variety of platforms and offer flexibility to businesses that require customized payment solutions. All along, the company has accommodated a high level of internal disruption. The case also explores the nature of Mastercard’s systematic collaboration with fintechs – players that often started out as competitors in specific parts of Mastercard’s value chain. It describes the company’s engagement with fintechs as fostering collaboration and co-creation and facilitating access; in other words, opening doors and sharing tools with partners. The case presents observations and quotes by CEO Michael Miebach, whose career trajectory at Mastercard – spanning Africa & Middle East experience, fintech partnerships, product management and the CEO role – sheds additional light on the philosophy and values that have driven the company’s transformation to a technology powerhouse and self-described original fintech.

An exploration of mental health in family business and its triggers, symptoms, and implications on the family enterprise ecosystem with tangible next steps to help leaders achieve long-term success.

This article explores the rise of activist shareholders and the market reforms that are increasing the attractiveness of Japan for foreign investors as they look beyond China

An increasingly complex business environment demands CHROs to be outward-looking, future-focused, and highly collaborative.

Improvements in technology have made deepfakes — fraudulent audio, video, and images — easier than ever to create. As a result, 2024 has seen a nearly 60% surge in phishing attacks. These attacks hijack our perceptions and our ability to distingui...

AI is already everywhere, ready to change the way we work and play, how we learn and how we are looked after. From hospitality to healthcare, entertainment to education, AI is transforming the world as we know it. But it’s developing at a differen...

As governments and foundations struggle to bridge a $42 billion aid gap, could new funding models provide answers to global humanitarian crises? A new report, Humanitarian Impact Finance: Instruments & Approaches, sheds light on promising new solu...

The Speedinvest co-founder discusses the complexities of fund-sizing in an unpredictable market.