Opinion

Facebook Inc may be preparing a fresh coat of paint for itself. A report in technology news site the Verge, citing a source with direct knowledge, says that the company is planning to change its name next week to reflect its new focus on building the metaverse — a new digital network for connecting to others through augmented reality and ...

Facebook Inc is planning to change its name to something related to the metaverse, a new digital network for communicating through augmented and virtual reality, according to a report in The Verge, which cites a source with direct knowledge. Over the weekend, the company also said that as part of its metaverse-building efforts, it would hire 10,000 high-skilled jobs in ...

If you turn Foxconn Technology Group’s latest product sideways, it looks remarkably like the smartphones the Taiwanese company makes for Apple Inc. Except the electric bus, a sleek, shiny vehicle with rounded corners and no mirrors, heralds the firm’s slow and deliberate journey away from that one famous client to which it’s become addicted. Separating the rise of Foxconn from ...

America’s shortage of labour, products and services — provoked by Covid-19’s disruption of the global economy — has a platinum lining in Los Angeles. Obscured by unprecedented supply-chain bottlenecks, California’s largest city and No. 2 in the US after New York, has no peers unloading, processing and transporting the nation’s imports from its two busiest ports. Being the supreme gateway ...

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is due to visit New Delhi this week and, to be honest, nobody in India knows why she’s coming. Trade experts elsewhere are aware that the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) new director-general has staked her credibility — and the organisation’s — on completing a long-delayed agreement to curb subsidies that have encouraged massive overfishing. As far as the ...

Betting on the “death of the city” after Covid always looked extreme — Classical Athens survived far worse plagues and disasters. Yet places like London and Paris are once again having to confront the risk of hardening into enclaves for the rich. Even as the scars of past lockdowns keep tourism subdued and some workers in far-flung locales, house prices ...

The first indictment in the Boeing Co 737 Max crisis should not be the last. Late last week, a federal grand jury charged the company’s former chief technical pilot, Mark Forkner, with deceiving Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials in their evaluation of the Max and scheming to defraud the plane maker’s customers. Forkner is the only person to be indicted ...

Merger arbitrageurs once found it easy to force bidders for German companies to pay a full price for a takeover target. But acquirers are adopting a new playbook to keep meddlesome hedge funds at bay. For the German corporate sector, it’s a pyrrhic victory. The key battle in German M&A used to be over securing a 75% holding — the ...

Clunk! With all the subtlety of a dropped hammer, Bank of England (BOE) Governor Andrew Bailey dispelled what little doubt was left that UK interest rates would be raised before the end of this year. The central bank would “have to act” to reduce inflationary pressures, he declared at an online panel held by the Group of 30, an organisation ...

Sooner or later, all UK Chancellors of the Exchequer have a choice to make: Are they the prime minister’s executive assistant for financial affairs? Or their successor in waiting? It’s a question that comes up because of the relative might of the UK Treasury and the ghosts of great Chancellors past, from William Gladstone to Winston Churchill to Gordon Brown. ...