Five years ago, I emigrated to Germany from Russia, because it had abandoned any pretense of wanting to be a European country. Now, I’m watching in amazement as Britons are doing the same, in droves, for the same reason. It’s well known that tens of thousands of UK citizens have obtained second passports from Ireland as insurance against a post-Brexit ...

As we count down to this month’s meetings of the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve, both of which are expected to maintain their monetary easing stance, the US yield curve has been quietly undoing the inversion that had raised alarms in the corridors of the world’s two most systemically important central banks. Over the last few weeks, the ...

On October 23, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, testified about his company’s cryptocurrency project at a hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee. In his testimony, Zuckerberg tried to reassure Congress that Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency would square the circle between financial inclusion and regulatory adherence, consumer privacy and proactive fraud detection. The one thing he didn’t manage to address ...

Among some intellectuals and environmentalists, it’s an article of faith that economic growth must be brought to a stop. If we fail to act, we’ll use up the planet’s resources and growth will suffer a disastrous collapse. For example, British writer George Monbiot has been advancing this point of view for quite some time. In April, he declared: Perpetual growth ...

UBS Group AG’s assets under management reached a record $2.5 trillion in the third quarter of 2019, buoyed in part by money from rich clients. Unfortunately, the world’s largest wealth manager is finding it harder to squeeze more profit out of this business; its chief executive officer Sergio Ermotti may be running out of ideas. Net profit at the Swiss ...

When political outsider Joko Widodo was first sworn in as Indonesia’s president five years ago, a little company called PT GO-JEK Indonesia was barely known. Their rise together since then has broken a technology barrier that was holding back the world’s fourth-most-populous country and promises the chance for a better future. Jokowi, as he’s known, is starting his second term ...

Bloomberg Google lured billions of consumers to its digital services by offering copious free cloud storage. That’s beginning to change. The Alphabet Inc unit has whittled down some free storage offers in recent months, while prodding more users towards a new paid cloud subscription called Google One. That’s happening as the amount of data people stash online continues to soar. ...

Bloomberg Following fits and starts, Apple Pay has become the top mobile payment method at brick-and-mortar stores in the US, according to research firm EMarketer. Apple Inc’s payment service will have 30.3 million users in the US this year, compared with 25.2 million for the Starbucks payment app, EMarketer estimated. Starbucks Corp had been the leader, with innovative features that ...

Bloomberg Flying taxis, once the purview of science-fiction films such as The Fifth Element, might soon be a staple of urban transport, as better batteries and innovative designs make it cheaper, cleaner, and quieter to travel short distances by air. Citigroup thinks sales of air taxis could reach $5 billion a year by the end of the next decade. Two ...

Bloomberg Amazon.com said it has acquired Health Navigator, a medical technology startup, in an effort to bolster its healthcare offerings for employees. The startup will be wrapped into a clinic for workers that launched last month at the company’s Seattle-based headquarters. Called Amazon Care, the programme offers virtual and in-person consultations, and delivery of prescriptions to employees’ offices and homes. ...