Opinion

Warren Buffett is a living, breathing billionaire, but he’s also a leading economic indicator. So after his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. dumped almost $13 billion of stocks in the throes of the Covid-19 crisis, investors were beside themselves. They’ll now be quite relieved to see that his company is back in buying mode, making the biggest outlay for equity purchases in ...

Mashing together the plumbing of the payments industry has provided a steady stream of deals for bankers. With Nexi SpA inking its agreement to buy Nets S/A over the weekend, the European sector now looks to be coalescing around two players, one French and one Italian. But this is probably only the end of the beginning for consolidation. Nexi’s combination ...

Reviving America’s commitment to fighting climate change will require effort from politicians, energy executives, to some extent everyone. Yet one group must not be forgotten: the fossil-fuel workers who have for decades toiled to power the country’s growth. They’ll bear much of the cost to ensure a sustainable future. They deserve much more support than they’ve seen so far. The ...

After almost a decade of “negotiating with blood, sweat and tears,” as Malaysia’s trade minister put it, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership was signed this weekend at the conclusion of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit. Fifteen countries — all of ASEAN, alongside Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and China — will be part of this giant trading ...

Going by sales and stock prices, is everyone buying and making cars in China again? Not quite. A quick review of the numbers: Passenger vehicle sales rose 9.5% in October from a year earlier, and have grown every month since May. Green cars, like hybrids and pure electrics, are standouts: Sales are up more than 50%. Stock prices for companies ...

China’s $4.1 trillion corporate bond market can be tricky to navigate. If 2018 was known as the year private businesses started to fumble, this one will go down for its wave of ugly defaults among state-owned enterprises (SOE). Some are so unseemly that even state banks are cutting their exposure. A default, on its own, is unpleasant but not unacceptable ...

The European Central Bank (ECB) appears serious about a digital euro. Barely a month after the central bank issued a major report on the topic, and opened a public consultation, President Christine Lagarde said “her hunch” is that the euro zone could have its own electronic currency within two to four years. Provided the rest of the institution’s governing council ...

India’s currency is strong, the stock market is surging, and long-term interest rates are under control. The technical recession that blighted the June and September quarters is probably already over. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has rolled out the red carpet for industries ranging from automobiles and solar panels to specialty steel. The iPhone supply chain is keen to set up ...

When Nobel Prize-winning economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee urged France’s Emmanuel Macron in September to impose a tough three-week circuit-breaker lockdown to halt the spread of Covid-19 in time for Christmas, they were politely ignored. Macron’s health minister, Olivier Veran, dismissed such planning as “pie in the sky” and said lockdowns were to be avoided. Six weeks later, the ...

Zambia has been careening towards a debt debacle for months, even years. Now it has become the first African nation to default on sovereign payments since the pandemic began. That’s bad news for everyone involved, from the bondholders who refused to agree to a standstill, to Chinese lenders, multilateral institutions and the government. A protracted restructuring lies ahead. More transparency ...