Opinion

Democratic rights in Asia have been under threat this past year, as leaders from India to Myanmar and Indonesia cracked down on protests, jailed activists and journalists, and took advantage of pandemic restrictions to stifle dissent. This backsliding on human rights is a key metric of the rising tide of populism that will hang heavily over the region in 2022. ...

You might think that the IPO of electric-truck wunderkind Rivian Automotive Inc — with its valuation soaring past $100 billion on zero revenue — perfectly captured the madness in autos in 2021. It was actually Rivian’s first quarterly results, when the company said it would miss its production target by “a few hundred” vehicles. Ever alert to any ripples in ...

  The Biden administration desperately needs a win on inflation, and cutting the price Americans pay for beef would have an immediate impact on most families. Yet the prescription unveiled by the White House this week to boost competition in the highly concentrated meat sector, while prudent, won’t make much of a dent on meat prices, at least not for ...

  From Unilever Plc to Colgate-Palmolive Co., consumer goods makers in India are facing distribution blues that have nothing to do with pandemic-induced shortages and bottlenecks. The trusted middlemen that brands have traditionally relied on to reach millions of small neighbourhood stores in 8,000 towns and 660,000 villages are in revolt. It’s a mutiny that the multinationals have invited upon ...

Italy is out of the traps fast in 2022 with a new 30-year syndicated bond. It’s a bold move as European yields have increased substantially in recent weeks in conjunction with the selloff in US Treasuries. Investor appetite is still strong with over 43 billion euros ($49 billion) of orders for what is an expected 7 billion euro issue — ...

  Last October, Citigroup Inc. told about 70,000 of its employees to get Covid-19 vaccinations or lose their jobs. Today, the banking giant made good on that promise, telling its staff that any who remain unvaccinated by Jan. 14 will be placed on unpaid leave and then lose their jobs at month’s end. “As it has become crystal clear that ...

  Appealing for outside help to quell protests that have rocked Kazakhstan this week, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev claimed his government was under attack by “terrorist” groups that had “received extensive training abroad.” In fact, ordinary Kazakhs have plenty reason of their own to be angry. Tokayev would be better off addressing that frustration than trying to violently suppress it. The ...

  There’s a frequent warning made in recent years to investors seeking to pressure companies to offload their fossil fuel assets: If listed businesses don’t own those mines, they’ll go over to the dark side. Polluting businesses sold to private equity may continue to “operate under new owners in the shadows,” former US Vice President Al Gore warned in the ...

  At some point after he became chief surgeon in Napoleon’s army, Dominique Jean Larrey started walking across blood-soaked battlefields to pick out those among the wounded who could still be saved, usually by instant amputation of limbs. In time, he developed a system of sorting and separating — trier in French — the casualties. Ignoring rank and nationality, he ...

  A new year’s resolution for billionaire Jack Dorsey: Spend more time on Tidal, the music-streaming platform recently acquired by his fintech firm Block, and less time on Twitter, where he’s no longer in charge but still making himself heard. Block’s $297 million purchase of a majority stake in Tidal was one of many post-Covid music milestones over past year, ...