February 25, 2024 • 3 min read with Matt Turner Hello! Welcome back to our Sunday edition. If you’ve got a networking event on the horizon, check out this 10-second trick that can make anyone a better conversationalist.    Now, let’s get to some of the biggest stories from the past week. On the agenda today Meet the M&A bankers making it rain. A new map could help bring down home prices. Luxury retailer Hermès is killing it these days. China’s grand plan to dominate the future of electric cars. But first: NASA is back on the moon with the first-ever commercial lunar landing.

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Intuitive Machines/NASA Dispatch Back to the moon It took more than 50 years, but an American moon lander is back on the lunar surface. The Odysseus lander, made via a collaboration between NASA and commercial operator Intuitive Machines, touched down on Thursday. It followed a string of failed landings, including one just last month from Astrobotic.  It’s an incredible feat of science and ingenuity. It also has the potential to fuel a new space race. The Odysseus launch was part of NASA’s Artemis program, which involves commercial giants like SpaceX and smaller companies like Intuitive Machines, which went public in a SPAC deal last year.  And whereas the Apollo program was about getting to the moon, Artemis is about staying there. The goal: to pave the road to human settlements beyond earth.

Courtesy of Goldman Sachs, Evercore, Larry Lettera/ Wagner Photos NYC, Tyler Le/BI Introducing: The Rainmakers While Wall Street’s mergers-and-acquisitions business dropped to a 10-year low in 2023, banks still benefited from a string of megadeals.    BI partnered with MergerLinks, a financial-data service that tracks deals, to identify the M&A bankers who orchestrated the largest deals in North America last year. The result is a list of 20 dealmakers from firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Evercore.   See who made the list.   Also read: Big deals are back with a $53 billion bang

Adrián Astorgano for BI Mapping the future America isn’t building enough homes. In part, that’s because of zoning rules, which change drastically based on what city or town or village you live in. (To put it numerically, there are more than 30,000 sets of zoning rules in America.)   Now, for the first time, a group of researchers is compiling every city's zoning rules into a National Zoning Atlas. A compilation of every town’s zoning maps could, ultimately, bring down the astronomical cost of housing. How the new atlas could spark change.

1st Dibs, VPanteon/Getty, Tyler Le/BI Hermès is on a tear Despite a slowdown in luxury spending, Hermès’ stock has grown 27% over the past year. And while other brands have leaned into social media marketing and celebrity partnerships, Hermès has not.   Its core products haven’t changed much, it does not gift celebrities its handbags, and it does not have a TikTok. Experts say the key to its success is that it hasn’t tried to meet the masses. Instead, it’s embraced scarcity. How Hermès became Wall Street’s unbeatable luxury brand.

Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images China is coming for America’s EV market Back in 2011, Elon Musk laughed off Chinese electric carmaker BYD, saying the company didn’t “have a great product.” How things have changed.     Over the past 13 years, BYD has caught up, eclipsing Tesla in 2023 as the best-selling EV maker in the world. As American carmakers figure out how to make good, affordable EVs (and get consumers to buy them), China threatens to upset the global automotive order entirely. More on Beijing’s plan to dominate the global EV space.

This week's quote "When people do take a risk and they succeed, everybody enjoys it. But when they lose, they're left hanging out to dry." — Duke professor Dan Ariely, following the university’s three-year fraud investigation.

More of this week's top reads RIP snow. Dining out is about to look a lot different. An HR professional shares the things she’d never do at work. Wayfair CEO says laying off workers has turned out great. This week, Nvidia showed the world it's the AI king. Pivotal, the flying-car company backed by Larry Page, laid off 10% of staff. Amazon documents warn employees not to use generative AI for work.

The Insider Today team Matt Turner, deputy editor-in-chief, in New York. Jordan Parker Erb, editor, in New York. Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York City. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York.