Covid has changed so much, it is easy to assume it has changed everything. Yet some of the predictions made a year ago about how the pandemic would transform the world of business have proved wide of the mark. In some cases, things seem to be heading in precisely the opposite direction.

Remember the claims made about global supply chains? Having been given a nasty shock by the lockdown in China, Western companies were going to make themselves more “resilient” by bringing home large chunks of the manufacturing they had outsourced. Well, nothing much has happened, at least not so far. It turns out supply chains are pretty sticky.