
LVMH Has Lost $167 Billion. Is Luxury's Old Model Broken?
Has luxury become too expensive even for luxury consumers?
A. Francis Ugbabe · 6 October 2026 · 4 min read
Research & Analysis
Institutional-grade research on Nigerian equities, frontier markets, currencies and global macro.

Has luxury become too expensive even for luxury consumers?
A. Francis Ugbabe · 6 October 2026 · 4 min read

Masayoshi Son is no longer simply investing in artificial intelligence. He is rebuilding SoftBank around it by using debt, asset values and one of the strongest semiconductor holdings in the world to finance an increasingly concentrated wager on the AI economy.
A. Francis Ugbabe · 29 September 2026 · 9 min read

Meta’s Muse may be the first sign that consumer AI is moving beyond answering questions and towards making decisions, booking services and completing purchases. If AI agents become the interface between consumers and the internet, some of the world’s most valuable digital business models could be forced to change.
ET&A Research · 24 September 2026 · 8 min read

Lululemon spent years proving that consumers would pay premium prices for athletic clothing. Its recent struggles show the other side of pricing power: a premium can disappear remarkably quickly when product differentiation and cultural relevance begin to fade.
ET&A Research · 7 September 2026 · 9 min read

For decades, consumer-goods giants were built on the assumption that bigger portfolios created stronger businesses. Unilever is increasingly betting on the opposite: fewer categories, fewer brands and considerably more focus.
ET&A Research · 4 September 2026 · 10 min read

Dangote Refinery could seek roughly $5 billion in an October IPO that may become Africa’s largest-ever listing. The opportunity is obvious: one of the world’s largest and newest refineries, positioned inside an African fuel market that has historically depended heavily on imports. The harder question is what investors should actually be willing to pay for it.
ET&A Research · 2 September 2026 · 12 min read

BlackRock built its dominance by becoming the world’s largest asset manager. Its next phase, however, is increasingly focused on businesses that look very different from traditional fund management. Infrastructure, private credit, data and investment technology could gradually make BlackRock’s earnings less dependent on public markets and significantly change how investors value the company.
ET&A Research · 24 August 2026 · 11 min read

Dangote Refinery is often discussed as a solution to Nigeria’s dependence on imported fuel. Its larger significance may be elsewhere: changing where margins are earned, where foreign exchange is spent, how fuel moves around the country and whether Nigeria can finally capture more value from its own hydrocarbons.
ET&A Research · 17 August 2026 · 10 min read

ASML occupies one of the strongest competitive positions in global industry. Its machines are indispensable to advanced semiconductor manufacturing, yet its exposure to chip investment cycles, geopolitics and rapidly changing technology makes the company considerably harder to value than the word “monopoly” might suggest.
ET&A Research · 17 August 2026 · 10 min read