Bloomberg General Electric Co reported solid results, reaffirmed its profit forecast and avoided the kind of nasty surprises that marred earnings in recent quarters. Chief Executive Officer John Flannery expressed optimism that GE would exceed its $2 billion cost-cutting goal and said he’s exploring new ways to run the company. “I’m excited about the path we’re on,” Flannery said on ...

Bloomberg Ericsson AB shares soared the most in more than 9 years after the Swedish maker of wireless networks posted first-quarter earnings that were stronger than analysts had expected, proof that the company is making progress in a protracted effort to reverse its fortunes. Ericsson’s closely watched gross margin — the share of sales remaining after production costs — rose ...

Bloomberg The bidding war for Brazil’s prized Eletropaulo SA utility is heating up with two European power giants looking to best each other’s bids. Italy’s Enel SpA said it would increase a promised capital injection to 1.5 billion Brazilian reais ($443 million) to sweeten its 28 reais-a-share offer for the AES Corp. unit. The move came hours after the Brazilian ...

History is what we make of it — and sometimes we make a real hash. I take as my text for the sermon that follows an op-ed essay in The New York Times this week by Times’ columnist David Leonhardt. The headline tells it all: ‘Democrats, the Real Fiscal Conservatives.’ Are you kidding? It is certainly true, as Leonhardt argues, ...

Anyone who doubts China could produce the next Roche Holding AG or Pfizer Inc. need only look at the country’s cancer figures: More than 4 million new patients or close to 12,000 per day diagnosed in 2015, the latest public data available. Global investors have settled on a favored contender in Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co., whose Shanghai-traded shares have surged ...

Wells Fargo & Co.’s $1 billion settlement with regulators already has some saying that this marks the end of a troubled period for the scandal-plagued bank. That might be wishful thinking. Part of the reason for the optimism is the size of the fine. Wells Fargo paid only $185 million for its fake-account scandal, which impacted as many as 3.5 ...

Taking stock of the global economy as finance ministers and central-bank governors gathered in Washington for its spring meetings, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found reason for concern. “[R]isks beyond the next several quarters clearly lean to the downside,” it reports. Well, that’s hardly unusual — the IMF exists to be concerned. Rarely, though, has it had better grounds. To ...

To many economists, the solution to India’s bad-loan crisis appears as obvious as the problem: Privatize state-owned banks, which have racked up billions more in soured loans and performed much worse than their private-sector counterparts. Yet, unless the government first strengthens its ability to supervise all banks, public and private, selling some of them off will be slim guarantee against ...

Outside of Britain it’s commonly assumed that the country regrets its decision to leave Europe. Indeed European Parliament Brexit Representative Guy Verhofstadt suggested recently that one day the UK might rejoin the EU. It’s also a view some inside Britain cling to as well; and yet there’s very little evidence to support it. Ever since the Brexit vote in June ...

Since 1993, the year before the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) went into effect, per capita gross domestic product in Mexico is up about 26 percent in real terms. That’s a lot better than the outright decline in per capita GDP that the country had experienced over the course of the 1980s. But it’s nowhere close to the 41 ...