Silicon Valley has a split personality about “brilliant jerks.” These are the kind of abrasive, boundary-pushing executives whom the industry (and often the media) lionizes — until they push boundaries too far and are kicked out of the tech Garden of Eden. Consider Anthony Levandowski, a former executive in Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving vehicle project whom the US government charged this ...

Dear Britain, please excuse the rest of us for our sheer disbelief: we were never expecting a constitutional crisis, let alone protests around the country. You are making Italy’s political system look like a model of composure, and that’s not something to be taken lightly. For years, we have admired your parliamentary democracy, with its eccentric rituals and timeless ceremonies. ...

Germany’s former transport minister (and current senior legislator) Alexander Dobrindt has proposed setting a price floor on air tickets, to eliminate the cheapest offerings from Europe’s ubiquitous discount airlines. The idea probably will be rejected for political reasons, but it’s actually one to consider when it comes to reducing air travel’s climate impact. It’s difficult to tax airline tickets: Taxation ...

Picking a new CEO is one of the most important decisions a board can take, yet one that Europe’s banks appear to be intent on flubbing. Lenders are struggling to find successors for the current crop of leaders. Take UBS Group AG. On August 29, the Swiss bank revamped its management board, hiring a star banker from a rival and ...

Wall Street was a very conservative place politically when I started working in the capital markets in 1999, but it seems to have lurched to the left lately. It’s not only that many of the people who work there have become more liberal, but more importantly, left-leaning behaviour by publicly traded companies is being rewarded by the stock market. The ...

Bloomberg European stocks climbed, US futures pared earlier declines and Asian shares were mixed after the latest China-tariff hikes kicked in. The dollar rose alongside gold. The Stoxx Europe 600 advanced for a third straight session, led by telecom and utilities shares. Equities in Japan, Hong Kong and Australia declined in thin volumes a day after President Donald Trump’s duties ...

Bloomberg In a classic illustration of the seemingly perverse relationship between UK news and its stock market, several British large-caps notched record highs on Monday as the equity benchmark outshone all of Europe. The FTSE 100 jumped as much as 1.4 percent, the most since July and more than double the gain of the Stoxx Europe 600, with companies including ...

Bloomberg A regional Chinese lender under the spotlight for liquidity strains plans to suspend dividend payments on its offshore preference shares, sending indicated prices on those securities tumbling. Bank of Jinzhou Co, which was the subject of a government-orchestrated rescue in July, said that it’s seeking shareholder approval to halt dividends for the year through October 26. That’s after its ...

Bloomberg Swiss National Bank sight deposits fell for the first time in seven weeks, suggesting the central bank has scaled back interventions to weaken the franc. Sight deposits, considered an early indicator of SNB market activity, declined 154 million francs ($155 billion). They had risen by 2.5 billion francs the previous week, and 3.8 billion francs the period before that. ...

Bloomberg Ireland won’t change its restrictions on banker pay, its junior finance minister signalled, in the clearest sign yet that the rules will remain in place. “I’m of the view the decision is made,” Michael D’Arcy said in a Bloomberg TV interview in Hong Kong. “The bankers in those institutions are well paid. The threshold is 500,000 euros and that’s ...