Wall Street’s giants are grappling with an unprecedented test of their business resilience — arguably their biggest challenge since 2008. A potential pandemic is forcing a complete rethink of how they operate, while stock markets plummet amid fears of an economic slump. For JPMorgan Chase & Co, the world’s most systemically important financial institution, the sudden absence of its powerful ...

Might as well be blunt about it: Mick Mulvaney, ousted last week, was probably the worst White House chief of staff ever. And there’s no reason to believe his replacement, Mark Meadows, will be any better. If anything, he looks like an even worse fit for the job than Mulvaney. Mulvaney’s main accomplishment seems to be that he was able ...

School nurses are already on the front line battling epidemics, from asthma to obesity to teen suicide. Now, as the coronavirus epidemic forces schools to shuffle sports schedules and debate whether to cancel proms, school nurses would seem to be ideal leaders to help guide the response, from offering prevention tips to correcting the kind of misinformation that inevitably courses ...

Hong Kong has fewer coronavirus cases than the US, Singapore or Italy. That might seem surprising for a city that sits on the doorstep of mainland China and has intertwining business, tourism and personal connections with the source of the epidemic. The reason can be summed up in one word: Sars. The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in ...

Britain’s largest grocer is heading for the checkout in Southeast Asia with an impressively full trolley. Tesco Plc said it had sold its Thai and Malaysian business to entities linked to Dhanin Chearavanont’s Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group for more than $10 billion, a heftier than expected price. It’s a bold bet on billionaire clout. Picking a buyer that already touches ...

Bloomberg Wednesday brought another day of reversals in many major markets, with US stock futures dropping, the dollar weakening and Treasury yields falling after surging a day earlier. Contracts on the S&P 500 Index fell about 2% after the US administration failed to offer details on what President Donald Trump said would be “major” measures to combat the economic impact ...

Bloomberg Indian stocks advanced in a volatile session after the nation’s benchmark capped its steepest two-day slide in more than 11 years. Investors weighing an oil slump against economic risks fuelled by the coronavirus outbreak sent the S&P BSE Sensex Index up 0.2% to 35,697.4 at the close in Mumbai, reversing an earlier loss of as much as 1.1%. The ...

Bloomberg It doesn’t seem to matter anymore whether global stocks are rising or falling — investors just keep snapping up more gold. Holdings in gold-backed exchange-traded funds surged by 55 tons in the previous three days, accounting for almost a third of year-to-date inflows, according to a preliminary tally by Bloomberg. As a haven asset, demand for gold tends to ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Russia said it would begin selling foreign currency ahead of schedule after the rout in oil prices made the ruble the worst-performing currency in the world. The move is aimed at “increasing the predictability of the actions of the monetary authorities and reducing volatility on financial markets amid significant changes in the world oil market,” according ...

Bloomberg Taiwan’s central bank disclosed its outstanding position in foreign-exchange swap trading, a rare move aimed at answering calls for improved transparency. The bank’s outstanding position in foreign-exchange swap trading was $99.1 billion at the end of February, the central bank’s Governor Yang Chin-long wrote in a report prepared for legislators. The central bank purchased a net $5.5 billion in ...