The world this week -- BusinessSamsung Electronics overhauled its senior management team and is to merge its smartphone business with its hitherto separate and wider consumer-electronics division.Combining the two will boost Samsung’s ability to provide customers with joined-up services across devices, similar to Apple.Concern grew about the Russian state’s intentions for social media when a complex set of deals involving subsidiaries linked to Gazprom gave the state-owned gas company voting control of VKontakte, Russia’s largest social network.Its chief executive stepped down.Russian media speculated that his replacement might be a senior executive at the state telecoms group, who is also the son of Vladimir Putin’s deputy chief of staff.Faced with an annual inflation rate running close to 11%, Brazil’s central bank raised its benchmark interest rate for the seventh time in 2021, by a hefty 1.5 percentage points to 9.25%, and indicated there will be more to come in 2022.Productivity among American workers in the third quarter declined by 5.2% from the previous quarter (on an annualised basis), the steepest such fall since 1960.The number of hours worked rose by 7.4%, far outpacing a 1.8% jump in output.The supply-chain crunch may have been a factor.The takeover of Arm, a British chip designer, by Nvidia, an American company which designs and sells computer chips, came closer to collapse.
