Opinion

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd didn’t hide its frustration when turning away from Hong Kong in 2013 and choosing to list in the US instead. “The question Hong Kong must address is whether it is ready to look forward as the rest of the world passes it by,” co-founder Joe Tsai wrote in a blog post that chastised the city’s exchange ...

Consider the hedge fund manager’s dilemma. If all she has is $200 million to $300 million in assets under management, she’d barely be able to afford that swanky office and the half-dozen analysts she’d need to run the operation. So she works hard to establish a track record and begins to manage, say, $2 billion to $3 billion. At that ...

Federal Reserve officials, confronting developments and an outlook they seem to have not anticipated, face tricky decisions as they finalised their policy deliberations on Wednesday. These centre on updating their individual projections and converging on whether — and if yes, how — to start a necessary policy pivot that unfortunately conflicts with the framework the central bank adopted recently to ...

On the eve of President Joe Biden’s summit with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president once again reminded the world why most Western leaders don’t trust a word he says. In an interview with NBC, Putin deployed his familiar arsenal of lies and counter-accusations. The attempted murder of opposition leader Alexey Navalny? Not me. Election meddling in 2016? Fake news. And ...

As lockdowns end, people are spending less on stuff and more on having a good time. A fortnight at the beach will suffice for most, but the ultrawealthy face the pressure to be more imaginative and to get more bang for their bucks. A space flight ticks many of the right boxes. Over the weekend Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue ...

When misfortunes multiplied during the coronavirus pandemic, observers seized on a four-letter word signaling end of days for the largest state with one-eighth the US population and 14% of its gross domestic product. “California doom: Staggering $54 billion deficit looms,” the Associated Press concluded a year ago in May. “California Is Doomed,” declared Business Insider two months earlier. ”Is California ...

As things stand, the global tax proposals recently announced by the Group of Seven’s finance ministers and endorsed at the weekend’s G-7 summit raise more questions than answers. The group’s governments say they’ve agreed on two linked initiatives — first, to set a common minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15%; second, to apportion the profits made by some ...

On the level of optics, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson can count his first meeting with US President Joe Biden a success. There were impressive photo ops, an exchange of gifts and a new Atlantic Charter to update the one Churchill and Roosevelt signed 80 years ago. But if Biden’s goal at the Group of Seven meeting in England was ...

The most effective weapon in America’s tussle with strategic and economic competitors may be 100 US cents. Countries like Russia and China chafe at the dollar’s dominance, but there’s little they can do other than posture and make relatively benign adjustments to their monetary arrangements. Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged as much, telling journalists that “we don’t want to do ...

The outlook for the global asset management industry, plagued in recent years by unmerciful downward pressure on fees, is starting to look brighter. With memestocks, decentralised finance and non-fungible tokens capturing the headlines, money managers need to keep up with the zeitgeist. A new report suggests that the cryptocurrency markets offer a great opportunity for fund managers and wealth management ...