Bloomberg Prominent activist Ventus Lau stood outside a restaurant, handing out surgical masks and asking recipients to shout pro-democracy slogans — including the popular rallying cry “Liberate Hong Kong! Revolution of our times!” For Lau, who has organised some of the biggest anti-government protests since they began last June, the demonstrations are on hold as fear of a new coronavirus ...

Bloomberg Ireland voted on Saturday, with PM Leo Varadkar’s party facing a struggle to retain power after almost a decade in office. Voting started at 7 am and was expected to finish at 10 pm. State broadcaster RTE was expected to release an exit poll immediately after voting ends. Counting is set to begin on Sunday, with a clear picture ...

The “Chinese model,” as enthusiasts sometimes describe Beijing’s autocratic system for dictating policy, can look eerily successful — until you consider catastrophic events such as the recent coronavirus outbreak. China’s response to the epidemic that began in Wuhan over a month ago shows some advantages of its police-state approach, and some severe disadvantages: Chinese authorities can commandeer resources to build ...

With the traditional department store in its death throes, Macy’s Inc. is doing its best to keep the concept alive. The struggling retailer last week unveiled a strategic blueprint to defend its business against the twin threats of online and discount competitors. The centerpiece is closing 125 of its department stores over the next three years, including some 30 locations ...

It’s easy to announce an initial public offering in Europe, but far harder to complete it. Don’t be distracted by the handful of decent-sized share issues launched in January. The recent evidence suggests that the target audience for European IPOs is smaller, fussier and harder to reach than it used to be. Some 17 offerings totaling 1.4 billion euros were ...

Germany made post-war history on February 5. In a total shock, one of the country’s 16 state parliaments elected a premier with votes that included members of a hard-right populist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Worse, one of the AfD leaders in that state, Thuringia, is Bjoern Hoecke, considered to be on the party’s extreme — indeed proto-Fascist — ...

Indian food, when done right, comes in a thali — a metal plate with half a dozen or more little bowls of vegetables, pickles, and so on. The word of the week in India is “thalinomics”: The government’s official survey of the Indian economy, published a few days ago, introduced the word to talk about how food was getting cheaper ...

Bob Dudley leaves BP Plc having almost settled the financial costs of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy in 2010 and overseen a necessary overhaul of safety, and more generally culture, in response to the disaster. Successor Bernard Looney inherits a financially strong company. That only increases the incoming CEO’s responsibility to upgrade BP’s strategy to meet the climate crisis. BP and ...

For Google, a partial voluntary breakup of its advertising business might be preferable to whatever regulators come up with on their own. Whenever people rattle off big tech deals whose regulatory approval was, in hindsight, a mistake, they tend to include the Alphabet Inc. unit’s $3.2 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008. I’ve done it three times in the past ...

Even in its worst days, Cadillac could count on its big, swanky Escalade to deliver profits. It still does, but with Ford Motor Co’s Lincoln Navigator and a handful of European competitors taking a bite out of the large luxury SUV market, General Motors (GM) Co is making a push to turn the fifth-generation Escalade into a high-tech showcase. When ...