It feels good again to be an investor in Italian government debt. Since the start of September, the yield on the benchmark 10-year bond has fallen from 3.24 percent to 2.79 percent, and the spread with German bunds has narrowed sharply. Bondholders seem confident that Italy’s finance minister Giovanni Tria will get his way in passing a prudent budget, despite ...

Now that everything has been said about the 10th anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, it’s worth asking how close we are to the next crisis. In the market for corporate loans, investors have fulfilled at least one prerequisite: They’re dropping their guard. The financial cycle has a lot to do with inattention. When something bad happens, people are careful ...

The West has turned hostile to open markets, but trade isn’t in retreat everywhere. In other parts of the world, it’s flourishing. The fashionable label “deglobalisation” misses the shift in import and export patterns that has seen emerging markets account for an increasing share of global trade in goods. Not the least of these is China’s expanding role as customer, ...

Most studies of the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on jobs and the economy have focused on developed countries such as the US and Britain. But through my work as a scientist, technology executive and venture capitalist in the US and China, I’ve come to believe that the gravest threat AI poses is to emerging economies. In recent decades, China ...

An escalating trade war, rising oil prices and a bear market in stocks — China Inc. is struggling. A multibillion-yuan windfall from corporate tax cuts might be the only way to revive animal spirits. Yet Beijing is walking the other way, preparing to break the camel’s back. Starting in January, China’s tax offices will collect companies’ social-security contributions as part ...

He may have struggled to mend India’s broken banking system, but at least Prime Minister Narendra Modi is shrinking the number of state-run banks to 19 from 26. Although that’s nowhere close to the original idea of ending up with just six, it’s a good start. The next step will be to nudge most taxpayer-funded banks away from me-too corporate ...

Bloomberg Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder Jack Ma cautioned China’s business and political leaders to prepare for the trade war with the US to last longer and have a bigger impact than most people think. China’s richest man said the dispute could last 20 years and persist beyond the presidency of Donald Trump, as the world’s two strongest economic powers ...

Bloomberg China’s holdings of US Treasuries fell to a six-month low in July, just as a trade war between the world’s two largest economies began heating up. China’s ownership of US bonds, bills and notes slipped to $1.17 trillion, the lowest level since January and down from $1.18 trillion in June, according to data released by the Treasury Department. Japan, ...

Bloomberg SK Holdings Co. is acquiring the largest foreign stake in Masan Group Corp. for about $470 million, in a deal that will value the Vietnamese diversified business group at about $5 billion. The South Korean group, which has businesses ranging from telecommunications to service sectors, will buy Masan Group’s entire 109.9 million treasury shares for $4.29 each, the companies ...

Bloomberg Chinese art and antiquities have been spared from President Donald Trump’s tariffs. At least so far. Trump ordered his administration to impose 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods next week and to raise the rate to 25 percent in January if Beijing refuses to offer trade concessions. Among items removed from the initial list of goods ...