Opinion

Strolling through the bustling construction zone of Amazon’s urban campus in Seattle, you instantly recognize the charm offensive the company has aimed at its hometown. ‘Banistas’ at two outdoor stands offer bananas to employees and passers-by — a visual cue to Amazon’s smiley logo. Most American cities would do backflips to have a jobs juggernaut like Amazon.com Inc. in their …

President Trump’s abrupt firing of FBI Director James B. Comey will intensify focus on the issue Trump has been so eager to dismiss — his knowledge of contacts between Michael Flynn and other associates and Russia. White House arguments that Trump sacked Comey for mishandling the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails are implausible, but no more so than some of …

India’s outsourcing firms are firing workers. Don’t blame it on President Donald Trump’s hawkish stance on US visas. The ‘end of hyper-globalization’ story makes for compelling headlines. But the Indian code-writers’ misfortune has more prosaic roots in technology and customer tastes. Global corporations, the paymasters of Indian software vendors, are no longer so keen to ante up for application development …

Everything about China’s “Belt and Road” project is big — from the scale of its investments to the guest list for this weekend’s gathering to celebrate the initiative. To improve its odds of success, China would be wise to think smaller. True, the initiative — which envisions building energy and transportation infrastructure from Asia to Europe — addresses real needs. …

US President Donald Trump’s abrupt firing of FBI director James Comey stunned the nation. It ignited a political firestorm as Comey was leading an investigation into whether Trump’s advisors colluded with Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election in his favour. It has given rise to suspicions that the White House was trying to blunt the …

With Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, there’s a widespread belief that populism is on the rise in the developed world. Writers and thinkers darkly warn of a crisis if elites don’t accede to the demands — explicit or assumed — of the working class. As I wrote in a previous post, it’s very hard to define whom to …

Wells Fargo & Co. is having a hard time pleasing anyone. At its annual investor day, the second-largest US lender by market value lifted the targeted annual savings figure from its cost-cutting program to $4 billion from $2 billion by the end of 2019. The move, which was flagged by analysts after hints from the bank itself, comes after Wells …

Ask Australians what they hate about their big four banks, and you get a familiar litany of complaints. Borrowing rates are too high, and deposit rates too low. Profits — almost A$23 billion ($17 billion) in the most recent fiscal year — are obscenely fat. Slick sales types promote financial products to under-informed punters without disclosing the full risks. Other …

The mystery at the center of the Michael Flynn case is why Donald Trump didn’t react sooner to warnings about Flynn’s involvement with Russia. Why didn’t Trump listen to President Obama’s caution against hiring him? Why did Trump wait 18 days before removing his national security adviser after urgent advice that Flynn could be ‘blackmailed’? We don’t have answers. But …

Emmanuel Macron’s election as French president removes the risk that one of the founding members of the European Union might seek to extricate itself from the euro. That in turn should be the signal for equity investors to take advantage of a less febrile political environment and buy European stocks. After several years of underperformance, economic growth in the euro …