In placing retaliatory tariffs on certain goods and products, America’s trade partners have signalled how well they understand American politics. By targeting products from areas supportive of President Donald Trump, they clearly hope to generate pressure to lift US tariffs or even create broader political problems for the president. But China is sending much more interesting — and complex — ...

By conventional measures of stock prices, Amazon.com Inc looks very expensive. It’s actually surprisingly cheap. Twenty-one years after it went public, a share of Amazon stock costs 70 times more than the company’s estimated per-share future earnings. That means investors are willing to pay much more for each dollar of Amazon’s earnings than for shares of Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Alphabet ...

Much has been made of the degradation of the $7.5 trillion US corporate debt market. High yield offers too little, well, yield. And “high grade” now requires air quotes to account for the growing dominance of bonds rated BBB, which is the lowest rung on the investment-grade ladder before dropping into “junk” status. And then there’s the massive market for ...

Britain’s endless self-inflicted turmoil over Brexit has taken a fresh turn, with Prime Minister Theresa May’s new plan for a post-Brexit trade agreement and the resignations of key ministers from her government. She’s accused of betraying those who voted for Brexit, and her leadership might soon be challenged. The prospect of a maximally disruptive “hard Brexit” draws ever closer. Yet ...

When it comes to climate change, I have always been a believer: not in hand-wringing debate, not in unrealistic solutions like the elimination of hydrocarbons, but in the power of action. In 1997, as chief executive of BP, I was the first leader of a major oil company to acknowledge that climate change was a problem, and that the industry ...

The European Central Bank lost control of the euro money market yield curve, and it wants it back. It has just snapped back on the leash by sending as clear a message as it can – within the incredibly tight framework it has set for itself – that it thinks rate expectations are too low. At its last policy meeting, ...

A moment of silence, please, for the world’s cheapest car, which has all but died in India. It was almost 10 years old. The Nano’s death was confirmed by production numbers: Tata Motors Ltd produced 1 unit in June, down from 275 in the same month last year. Exports were zero, versus 25 in June 2017. The company acknowledged that ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG is deploying top executives, as well as billions of dollars, as it seeks to win more business with Wall Street’s most active dealmakers. Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing and other senior managers at the bank have fanned out in recent weeks to meet leaders of big US private equity firms, looking to strengthen relationships and drum ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is using its position in the $800 billion market for exchange-traded bond funds (ETF) to build a business that its Wall Street rivals now want to emulate. The bank has this year almost tripled the volume of ‘‘credit portfolio trades,’’ whereby it buys or sells large scale blocks of securities through ETFs, to around $20 ...

Bloomberg Barclays Africa Group Ltd. is no more. And with that a chapter closes on its former British parent’s 100-year history on the continent. The lender on Wednesday ditched the name to revert to Absa Group Ltd. as it severs ties with Barclays Plc after the London-based company sold down the controlling stake it bought in 2005. The Johannesburg-based company ...