Can he also transform investors perceptions of it?
Santa’s quirky management style, combining large quantities of mulled wine with a tight grip on the reins, has turned the ho-hum into the ho-ho-ho. Once just a two-day affair in churches and private houses, Christmas is now the biggest-spending item in most western countries after health care and defence. The logistics of that success require Santa to be in thousands of malls by day and down millions of chimneys by night. Advisers say he relies on a series of proprietary algorithms derived from Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which allow him to be in an infinite number of places simultaneously so long as nobody believes he is really in any one of them. Of course, Christmas has to grapple with the fundamental uncertainties affecting all modern industries. They include globalisation, the spread of the internet and the pervasive power of Wal-Mart. All of these seem to be working, for the moment at least, in Christmas’s favour. Global warming may pose a long-term risk. The ageing of th
