Shell CEO Pledges to Deal With Chemicals Business Stuck in Slump
'The trough that we have seen in chemicals margins has been one of the longest we have seen in a very, very long time,' Wael Sawan said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. 'We continue to have important turnaround plans to be able to alleviate that.'
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Yahoo
4 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Rachel Reeves making ‘even bigger mistakes' than Liz Truss, says Kemi Badenoch
Kemi Badenoch has said Rachel Reeves is making 'even bigger mistakes' than Liz Truss. The Tory leader hit out at the Chancellor and the Prime Minister for their economic decisions as she drew a critical comparison to her predecessor at the top of the Conservative Party. 'For all their mocking of Liz Truss, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have not learnt the lessons of the mini-budget and are making even bigger mistakes,' Mrs Badenoch wrote in The Telegraph. 'They continue to borrow more and more, unable and unwilling to make the spending cuts needed to balance the books.' Short-lived Conservative prime minister Ms Truss's mini-budget spooked the financial markets in 2022 and led to a spike in mortgage rates. 'As we all saw in 2022, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister are reliant on the bond markets,' Mrs Badenoch added. 'Yet those bond markets are increasingly jittery about the levels of borrowing today with no balancing spending decreases. 'Rachel Reeves's unfunded series of U-turns have only added to the pressure. She is boxed in by her party on one side, and her fiscal rules on the other.' The Chancellor earlier admitted Labour had 'disappointed' people while in Government, but said that the Government had got the balance right between tax, spending and borrowing. She told an audience at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that balancing the books meant making tough decisions, even if the are unpopular. Appearing on the Iain Dale All Talk Fringe show, she said: 'The reason people voted Labour at the last election is they want to change and they were unhappy with the way that the country was being governed. 'They know that we inherited a mess. They know it's not easy to put it right, but people are impatient for change. 'I'm impatient for change as well, but I've also got the job of making sure the sums always add up – and it doesn't always make you popular because you can't do anything you might want to do. You certainly can't do everything straight away, all at once.' Ms Reeves pointed to Labour's £200 million investment in carbon capture in the north-east of Scotland, which she said was welcomed by the industry. At the same time, Labour's windfall tax, she said, was not liked by the sector. 'I can understand that that's extra tax that the oil and gas sector are paying, but you can't really have one without the other,' she said. Defending Labour's record, she said her party had the 'balance about right'. 'But of course you're going to disappoint people,' she added. 'No-one wants to pay more taxes. 'Everyone wants more money than public spending – and borrowing is not a free option, because you've got to pay for it. 'I think people know those sort of constraints, but no-one really likes them and I'm the one, I guess, that has to sort the sums up.' Ms Reeves said Labour had to deliver on its general election campaign of change, adding that her party did not 'deserve' to win the next election if it does not deliver the change it promised.
Yahoo
4 minutes ago
- Yahoo
If You'd Invested $1,000 in Solana 5 Years Ago, Here's How Much You'd Have Today
Key Points Solana runs on a proof-of-stake network that is one of the fastest in the crypto world. The network is already processing thousands of transactions per second. The technical strength of the network has made it a home run for investors. 10 stocks we like better than Solana › Only launched about 5.5 years ago, Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) is now the sixth-largest cryptocurrency in the world with a market cap of over $96 billion as of July 30. Many investors see immense potential in Solana's network. It's one of the few cryptocurrencies to operate on a proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism to govern the network. After realizing how energy-intensive the traditional crypto-mining, proof-of-work (PoW) system had become on Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, several crypto networks transitioned to PoS. Instead of using high computing power to solve a puzzle like with PoW, PoS has investors stake their tokens to the network, and then assigns them at random to validate transactions and mint new tokens. The more tokens one stakes, the higher the chance they have of being selected and also earning rewards. Even more unique, Solana's network also has a proof-of-history mechanism that essentially creates a sequential record of transactions, enabling even faster transactions on the network. As a result, Solana's network can process thousands of transactions per second (TPS), but it has the theoretical potential to process up to 65,000 TPS, if not more. This gives Solana and its network immense potential to disrupt the global payments system. Investors have done well While volatile like most cryptocurrencies, Solana has been a huge winner for investors that bought the token five years ago. The technical strength of its network has made Solana one of the few altcoins that investors see a strong use case for. Roughly five years ago, Solana traded for just $1.73. Today, it trades for over $179. That's a gain of roughly 10,264%. So, if you invested $1,000 in Solana five years ago, you now have $103,636! That's simply incredible. Investors aren't likely to find too many investments like that in their lifetime. Should you invest $1,000 in Solana right now? Before you buy stock in Solana, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Solana wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $624,823!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,064,820!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,019% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 178% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 29, 2025 Bram Berkowitz has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Solana. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. If You'd Invested $1,000 in Solana 5 Years Ago, Here's How Much You'd Have Today was originally published by The Motley Fool
Forbes
6 minutes ago
- Forbes
You Want To Speak Memorably? Try These Smart Tips
In today's high-stakes professional world, the ability to communicate isn't just a competency—it's currency. Are you leading a team? Strong communication skill is one of your most important tools. Pitching a product? Ditto. Navigating a job interview? Ditto. In most every workplace situation, your presentation style can be the defining factor between influence and invisibility. Bill McGowan understands this better than most. This Emmy Award-winning TV journalist and bestselling author is a top communications advisor to leading names in business, tech, entertainment, sports, and finance. He's coached the founders of Amazon, Meta, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Spotify, Snapchat, and Airbnb … as well as Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy winners and World Series, Super Bowl, and Olympic champions. McGowan's latest book is Speak, Memorably: The Art of Captivating an Audience. His experience in TV journalism underscored many of the lessons he now provides as a coach. For example, when McGowan worked on ABC's popular '20/20' show, the executive producer would share the minute-to-minute ratings of a segment. Any time an on-camera personality told a story, viewers' interest spiked. Stories, McGowan learned, are much more compelling than statistics. You want to break out of the conformity zone? McGowan recommends avoiding 'corporate speak' and communicating concisely with clarity and simplicity. And at every opportunity, use pertinent stories. While it's important that every part of a presentation be interesting and relevant, McGowan highlights what psychologists call the primary-recency effect: people tend to remember the first and last items in a sequence better than those in the middle. That's a clue on where compelling stories, challenges, or facts should be in a presentation. To underscore the importance and power of simplicity, McGowan tells of a CEO who was in a media interview about a struggle his company was experiencing. The interviewer asked the CEO, 'Why do you think your IPO underperformed vis-à-vis the other companies in your competitive space?' McGowan says that instead of blaming the market or a poor valuation or even suggesting that they didn't have the right financial institution leading the offering, the CEO simply said, 'We underperformed because we failed to come up with a narrative that could fit on the back of a cocktail napkin.' McGowan used that story to kick off a speech he made to a group of communication clients. Using a 'through line,' the connective tissue that helps explain the relevance of a story, he spoke on the subject of simplicity. Citing research studies, McGowan says factual information embedded within storytelling becomes 22 times more memorable 'than if you just fire hose talking points and data points.' McGowan coaches his clients to communicate the visual, the specific, and the anecdotal. When you speak abstractly and theoretically, it's pictureless, he says. 'We human beings have this movie reel spinning in our heads at all times. If a speaker doesn't give us imagery to work with, that movie reel keeps spinning in our head—only now it's spinning with the images we've created. That's what daydreaming is.' In what ways has the rise of remote work and virtual meetings affected the way people communicate? In addition to what many people now call 'Zoom fatigue,' McGowan talks about 'Zoomnesia.' That occurs when people attend a seemingly endless string of remote meetings in which they're sitting in the same room with the same potted plant on their desk and the same view out the window and with no contextual clues. That circumstance makes it even harder for people to retain information, and it underscores the value of well thought-out communication practices that engage people's thinking. McGowan frequently uses metaphors in his coaching. For example, he talks about what he calls the 'pasta sauce principle.' You put a pot of tomato sauce on the stove and cook it down for about three hours. You then have something with about half the volume but a lot more flavor. 'But it takes time and effort to get that reduction going,' McGowan says. 'The same is true for speaking.' It wouldn't be accurate to say McGowan has written a cookbook. But Speak, Memorably certainly provides the ingredients for welcome servings of appetizing communication. Whether you're giving a TED talk, speaking at the local Rotary Club, or just trying not to lose people in your Monday morning staff meeting, McGowan offers insight that will boost your communication mojo.
