Opinion

Twitter Inc. deserves a full-time CEO. That’s the message from activist investor Elliott Management Corp., which has taken a stake of around 5% and has nominated members to the social-media company’s board as part of a campaign to oust incumbent Jack Dorsey. In addition to running Twitter — which he co-founded — Dorsey is also CEO of online payments processor ...

The economic damage from the coronavirus epidemic has prompted calls for Europe to relax its fiscal rules to allow governments to cut taxes and increase spending. The European Commission seems to agree: Paolo Gentiloni, its economy tsar, has hinted that affected governments — such as Italy — may enjoy some budget “flexibility” to deal with the emergency. Granting more leeway ...

In times of coronavirus panic, even havens can be unreliable. Gold closed off February on a tarnished note, ending last week with its steepest daily decline since 2013. As financial markets panicked over the spread of the pneumonia-like illness, stocks tumbled and dragged gold and other precious metals lower. That’s a rare phenomenon for a metal that tends to shine ...

When Laxman Narasimhan cut the full-year outlook for Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc in October, the company’s new chief executive officer threw in everything but the kitchen sink. Last week, he said the operating margin would be much lower in the future and announcing a 5 billion-pound ($6.5 billion) writedown to the value of the Mead Johnson baby-formula business, which Reckitt ...

Both the Federal Reserve and the White House are considering emergency measures to combat the economic fallout from the coronavirus. These are the right responses, but they don’t go far enough. To be clear, the coronavirus is first and foremost a public-health threat. The full resources of the federal government should be marshalled against it. At the same time, the ...

A viral video of a man punching the back of a women’s reclined airline seat got Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian’s attention. But he made things worse, when he asked flyers to be polite and check with the passengers behind them before hitting the recline button. This angered many people who have watched seats shrink over the ...

There hasn’t been a full-length runway built in southeast England, where London’s Heathrow airport is located, since World War Two. With a climate crisis raging, now is a bad moment to try. Europe’s largest airport hub makes do with two landing strips (Amsterdam’s Schiphol has six), and with 80 million passengers using them every year, they can’t handle any more. ...

If you ever wondered how much Sen. Bernie Sanders’ vast array of policy proposals would cost, we now have a reasonably good estimate from his own staff. The answer is about $50 trillion over the next decade. Sanders may or may not be a “democratic socialist” — whatever that means — but he clearly is a soak-the-rich radical who would ...

We all knew that the stock market boom would one day come to an end, but who imagined that the instrument of its demise would be a runaway global virus? The market had been setting new highs as late as February 12 and appeared little concerned with the coronavirus, whose effects seemed mainly confined to China. Since then, it’s been ...

Will a provincial government be able to save China’s Tesla wannabe? Investors seem to think so. The reality may be different. New York-listed NIO Inc., a self-described pioneer in China’s premium electric vehicle market and rival to Elon Musk’s company, said that it has made a tentative agreement with the municipal government of Hefei in Anhui province for funding support. ...