Turkey’s referendum on expanding the president’s power is facing resistance both from inside and outside the country. The country is deeply divided over the constitutional changes proposed by President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan. It would bring an executive presidential system, merging the powers of the prime minister and the president. Erdogan argues that a strong presidency will make Turkey better …
Read More »Opinion
Tesla’s fundraising is just an appetizer
Tesla Inc. clearly understands the best appetizers leave you hungry for more. After months of playing coy about whether or not it would raise more money, Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle-cum-renewable-energy company announced it was seeking up to $1.15 billion in new money, three quarters of it from a convertible bond and the rest from selling new stock. Bit of a …
Read More »India needs private equity to create corporate losers
Private equity in India is beset by a trinity of predicaments. The first is what managers get paid for: finding businesses that can deliver 20% returns in an economy where asset valuations, at least in public markets, are already the most expensive in Asia. A bigger problem is the frustration of knowing where the winners are hidden in the …
Read More »UK bankers need to come clean on Brexit costs
It’s a sad state of affairs when European unity is splintering before the UK has even officially triggered the process of leaving the EU. It’s worse for the City of London that banks and insurers can’t easily exploit that to their advantage. Regulators, officials and ministers across Europe have spent the past week throwing rocks at each other about …
Read More »Making Medicaid great
It’s time to take control of Medicaid before it takes control of us. Unless we act — and there is little evidence that we will — Medicaid increasingly becomes another mechanism by which government skews spending toward the old and away from the young. In the raging debate over the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), this is a subject that …
Read More »China’s drugmakers need panacea for nation’s deal dearth
Have money, can’t buy. That’s the dilemma facing China’s drugmakers as they look to acquire overseas assets to sate the country’s growing healthcare needs. Snapping up vitamin producers and the like hasn’t proved a problem, but snaring actual pharmaceuticals manufacturers is a different matter, and will be put to the test as Germany’s Stada Arzneimittel AG hits the brakes …
Read More »Little to celebrate in Dutch elections
It says something about the state of European politics that the Dutch election results are widely seen as cause for celebration. Geert Wilders — a far-right populist who makes Donald Trump look like a cautious centrist — did worse than expected. But he was by no means crushed, and the anger Wilders and his ilk are channeling is still …
Read More »Merkel-Trump first meet speaks volume
It was their first face-to-face meeting at the White House. And they were not goody-goody about each other. US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried utmost to sidestep the issues that could be a spoiler in their first public appearance. Their inability to shake hands in the Oval Office spoke volume about the meet. During presidential …
Read More »Shorting the euro is an outdated strategy
Michael Hasenstab, the star bond investor, says he’s betting against the euro as a “hedge against populism.†This, however, is a narrative that’s going out of fashion; it won’t define the euro’s performance this year. In the summer of 2014, Hasenstab defended his Templeton Global Bond Fund’s investment in Ukrainian bonds by saying, “What we liked was that everyone …
Read More »Death of the shoe salesman, finally
Another storied occupation is on its way out and the replacement is neither robots nor foreign workers. We’re witnessing the death of the shoe salesman. Macy’s recently said it would convert more shoe departments to an “open sell†format, where customers serve themselves from stacks of boxes. J.C. Penney is experimenting with the format. It’s the way sales have …
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