Bloomberg A moment of triumph, the declaration of Europe’s newest independent state, has quickly become the cold reality of what Catalonia’s separatists were always likely to face in their historic collision with Spain. Within hours of the parliament in Barcelona voting to break away, the would-be Catalan Republic was hit by the might of the Spanish state. Rather than leaving ...

Bloomberg Kenya is no closer to resolving months of political turmoil after millions of opposition supporters boycotted a Supreme Court-ordered repeat of its presidential election, raising the likelihood of another legal challenge to the outcome. Less than half of registered voters cast ballots, down from the 79 percent turnout for Aug. 8 elections that the court annulled because proper procedures ...

The NAFTA war is heating up. It’s a confusing conflict because perceptions are driven by political rhetoric, not economic reality. NAFTA, of course, stands for the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has eliminated most tariffs among the United States, Mexico and Canada. During the campaign, candidate Donald Trump denounced NAFTA as a bad deal for the United States. He ...

China’s laying out the red carpet for foreign banks. This time, few will be rushing in. The country’s top banking regulator, Guo Shuqing, says the market share of overseas lenders is falling and that isn’t good for competition. The government plans to ease ownership and business restrictions to make life easier for them. The share of global financial institutions in ...

In its determination to do whatever it takes to ‘save coal,’ the Trump administration has never let public health or the climate stand in the way. Now it wants to go one better. Its latest sacrifice to the cause is simple economic efficiency. To stop the recent spate of coal-fired electricity plant closures, Energy Secretary Rick Perry wants power markets ...

The latest escalation of the crisis in Catalonia is a grave threat to Spain and a serious test for the European Union. The immediate priority should be moving back from the brink of violent confrontation, and the EU can help by urging restraint on Madrid. This was an avoidable breakdown. The Catalan leadership is chiefly to blame — first, for ...

India has long been faced with a slow-motion bank crisis. In particular, the state-controlled institutions that dominate the sector have a bad-loan ratio that’s almost twice as bad as their private counterparts. At last count, non-performing assets made up more than 10% of banks’ advances, and were growing ever faster. Naturally, banks faced with this burden aren’t exactly eager to ...

It is a truth (almost) universally acknowledged these days that an investor in want of a good fortune needs to be in possession of an index-tracking fund rather than an active manager. UBS AG, though, disagrees — at least in Europe. The Swiss bank’s analysts, led by Michael Werner, who covers the fund management industry from London, crunched the numbers ...

As of early fall, it was clearer than ever that production problems meant Apple Inc. wouldn’t have enough iPhone Xs in time for the holidays. The challenge was how to make the sophisticated phone—with advanced features such as facial recognition—in large enough numbers. As Wall Street analysts and fan blogs watched for signs that the company would stumble, Apple came ...

Bloomberg One of Sony Corp.’s most promising bets on the future is hiding in plain sight. Inside the electronics maker’s Atsugi Technology Center, a research campus located an hour outside Tokyo, engineers and researchers are developing sensors that can detect people and objects by calculating how long it takes for light to reflect off surfaces. With plans to go into ...