Opinion

A tidy financial centre of 5.7 million people is gradually preparing for life after the pandemic, as vaccination rates increase, social distancing measures ease and residents once again dare to daydream about leisure travel. A short ferry ride away, a sprawling archipelago with a population of 270 million is struggling to get oxygen, daily Covid cases are north of 20,000 ...

This is one of the most joyous weekends in the American calendar, high summer and the commemoration of the nation’s historic leap towards freedom from colonial dominion 245 years ago. The British, some readers may be surprised to learn, cherish no matching holiday to celebrate our deliverance from decades of funding the defense of those ungrateful folks. If Americans were ...

While the US, the United Kingdom and Russia are expected to sit high on any list of cyber nations, one surprise name also mixes with the best, highlighting the value of having solid allies over technical prowess. Malaysia came in eighth out of 194 states in this year’s Global Cybersecurity Index by the International Telecoms Union, a United Nations agency. ...

The latest private equity deal in the UK — the biggest in more than a decade — raises an awkward question for investors in the London stock market. How can the UK’s fourth-biggest supermarket chain be worth more to a consortium comprising Canadian pensioners and US buyout and real-estate investors than to the home crowd? It looks like the starkest ...

What’s harder? Spotting a unicorn in a dense forest or pulling one away from the cliff? Or, in less pictorial terms, venture capital or investing in promising but distressed assets? Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, which built a sprawling consumer tech empire through lots of equity investments, will soon find out as it increases its stake in the online retailer Suning.com ...

Didi Global Inc is bringing its dominant ride-hailing position in China to the US stock market. While the Beijing-based company’s 80% share of the sector has made it attractive to Wall Street investors, that dominance has also brought on an investigation by China’s competition authorities. Didi seems to have decided to navigate between those two interests by driving through the ...

The unprecedented heat wave that recently gripped the Pacific Northwest demonstrates a crucial fact about climate change that most people don’t seem to appreciate yet: This will not be a smooth, predictable event. In addition to new costs that can be anticipated, climate change creates enormous risks that may result in a far higher price tag to the global economy, ...

Apple Inc is feeling the heat. Regulators and lawmakers are circling the technology giant, threatening to crack down on its business practices and, conceivably, challenge the fundamental nature of how its mobile platform works. The company, naturally, has mounted a spirited defense claiming its policies protect users’ privacy and security. It’s worth carefully considering their argument: If they’re right, the ...

The political maneuvering about infrastructure is getting pretty strange, what with President Joe Biden first cheering a bipartisan bill, then threatening to veto it, and then taking back the veto threat in the span of two days. When the action on stage gets hard to follow, it can be helpful to review the main characters and their motivations. The 21 ...

The list of what e-commerce platforms aren’t allowed to do in India has been growing for some time, but the latest prohibition on flash sales has simply gone too far. If the rules get implemented, the entire business model of Amazon.com Inc and Walmart Inc could come unstuck before their investments in a market of 1.4 billion people can grow ...