It's a brutally competitive market without doubt, and with competitors such as Ryanair and its mercurial CEO around, you get perhaps some extra heat compared with other industries. Yet short-haul, leisure-focussed air travel in Europe has seen a few decent years ever since the start of consumers' revenge buying in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Sweden's traditional steel mill, SSAB is in an enviable position relative to its peers - for three reasons: 1) Its plants are strategically well placed on both sides of the Atlantic; thus, it will not be caught between millstones when the US and the EU get entangled in a trade war centred on steel and aluminium. Indeed, the company is set to downright profit from it, when its markets both in the US and the EU will get protection from Chinese and Korean competition.

Both commercially and, according to several industry rankings and customer surveys, in terms of its product, Cathay Pacific is up there with the top carriers in international air travel. Only Singapore Airlines, the region's other leading carrier, matches Cathay's remarkable margins and earnings strength.

It is one of the three biggest carmakers in the world, with a dominant market share of some 21 per cent in its home market - which actually grew in the recent past. Yet both from a strategic and a global perspective, the Wolfsburgers are under marked pressure.

There's a single reason why American is the least attractive of US legacy carriers (in terms of investing, anyway): its balance sheet. If most airlines and certainly those in the US are loaded up to the hilt with debt, American goes so far as to boast negative equity - any startup would go belly-up with a balance sheet such as this one.

As written here in February, Delta is the leading carrier among the major US airlines. In terms of profitability, fleet management/modernisation and thus cost effectiveness, and yield management, the guys from Atlanta rule the roost.

Renault is the one major European car producer without significant exports to or activities in the US; the same holds true for China, at least relatively to its European peers. Usually a disadvantage, because these markets were where the growth was, that gives RNO now a distinct competitive advantage when it comes to the likely tariff stand-off between the US and the rest of the world, even if doesn't start right this April.