The Economist

Buy-out firms are the new banks in emerging markets

Electric-scooter startups are becoming more cautious

A star manager comes a cropper, leaving pension funds frozen

Europe's startup factory is struggling to spend its cash

The grain is getting a new lease of life

TransferWise becomes Europe’s most valuable private fintech

Big Agri wants to make quinoa more mainstream

The biggest collapse in private-equity history will have a lasting impact

Abraaj was one of the world’s highest-profile private-equity firms. We take a look at its spectacular downfall, and the fate of its charismatic boss, Arif Naqvi

The plot thickens in cryptoland

Banks beware: currency trading is entering the modern age

“Small Island”—adapted from a novel by Andrea Levy that was published in 2004—unpicks the complex, vicious tangle of power relations between coloniser and colonised, insider and outsider

The Intelligence - The Economist's daily podcast (16:25 onwards)

Vietnamese migrants are thriving in Poland and Czechia (with Aman Rizvi)

Life for the kings of package holidays is no picnic

Why You Like It. By Nolan Gasser.Flatiron Books; 720 pages; $32.50. T that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” has been ascribed to Elvis Costello, Laurie Anderson and Thelonious Monk, among others. Undaunted, in “Why You Like It” Nolan Gasser attempts to explain the ineffable ways music produces sensations in listeners’ brains: its power to move people to tears, evoke awe and induce involuntary toe-tapping. Plus the odd proclivity of sad songs to seem uplifting. Mr Gasser

Why You Like It. By Nolan Gasser.Flatiron Books; 720 pages; $32.50. The adage that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” has been ascribed to Elvis Costello, Laurie Anderson and Thelonious Monk, among others. Undaunted, in “Why You Like It” Nolan Gasser attempts to explain the ineffable ways music produces sensations in listeners’ brains: its power to move people to tears, evoke awe and induce involuntary toe-tapping. Plus the odd proclivity of sad songs to seem uplifting.

David Boulton, a broadcaster and author, is among those who think there is no transcendent God and is even “a bit queasy about the word spiritual”, preferring to call himself a humanist. But he feels comfortable as a Quaker. By contrast Nat Case, a cartographer and non-theist Quaker from Minneapolis, is more open to talk of the supernatural, though he rejects the idea of an external God. He compares his relationship with religion to his appreciation of “Star Wars”: “You don’t need to know the lines from all the movies…It’s about how it grabs you.” [with Bruce Clark]

The weed is an opportunity, but the government has to be careful

The risk of staging a play about ennui is the possibility of instilling the same feelings in the audience

Too much of the money they send home evaporates en route. How can costs be driven down?

Sending money across borders is getting less painful—at long last

We explore how fintech companies strive to disrupt the global remittance market

More people than ever seek to uncork a profit

“I realised quite early on that I was gay,” says Soly, a 25-year-old chef from Tehran. As a young boy, he would strut about the house in his mother’s high heels and developed crushes on male cartoon characters. But after he was expelled from school for wearing eye-liner, his parents took him to a psychologist who offered a different explanation. “He told me I was transgender and had to change my sex.”

A mega-merger intensifies the scramble to build global payment systems

FIS and Worldpay agree on a $43bn merger

Greta Thunberg is an unlikely figurehead. In August the then 15-year-old high-school student walked out of her classroom and took up position outside Sweden’s parliament with a hand-painted sign that read “skolstrejk för klimatet” (school strike for climate change). Sitting alone on the cobblestones, she provoked puzzled looks from passers-by. Seven months later Ms Thunberg finds herself at the helm of a global movement.

Brexit? The London Stock Exchange is not bothered

Development banks are back in favour. Can they succeed?