Opinion

Warren Buffett is credited with that old saying about receding tides and embarrassed skinny-dippers. In Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s case, the lack of swimwear is one problem, but so is the anchor tied around its ankle. Part of that anchor is the old sage himself. Oxy, as it is known reported results for its first full quarter since acquiring Anadarko Petroleum ...

In times of distress, a centralised financial system can go a long way. Global investors, bruised by an ugly week of asset selloffs, can perhaps consider buying the dip — but only in China. In the past, if the US sneezed, emerging markets would soon be in the emergency room. Not this time. While the S&P 500 Index is heading ...

It’s not often these days that Germany’s Social Democrats have good economic ideas. But a forthcoming initiative by one of them makes eminent sense, and deserves more support than it’s likely to get. Olaf Scholz, the finance minister, wants to suspend the country’s so-called “debt brake,” a constitutional limit on public deficits and borrowing. But the SPD’s senior partners in ...

With impeccable timing, the private equity industry has agreed a jumbo leveraged buyout (LBO) just as markets have turned dramatically. It’s a bad look, and Advent International and Cinven will have to strain every sinew to make their 17 billion-euro ($19 billion) deal for Thyssenkrupp AG’s elevator business pay off. Germany’s Thyssenkrupp is a distressed seller but the industrial conglomerate ...

Concerns over Lenovo Group Ltd.’s financial outlook have brought new scrutiny to the Chinese maker of computers, servers and smartphones. Its stock dropped 5.7% on February 26 in Hong Kong, the fourth straight decline, after a tweet from short-seller Muddy Waters referenced a recent report by Bucephalus Research Partners Ltd. That piece highlighted a series of issues it had with ...

Believe it or not, I was all ready to praise Donald Trump this time. I really thought when he announced a press conference that he would manage to stick to a reasonable script, and there were very promising rumors that he was prepared to make an excellent choice for a new coronavirus czar. Why? Because so much was on the ...

Standard Chartered Plc may have many failings. At least it has a leader. The London-based emerging markets bank run by Bill Winters hasn’t had the best of years, and the outlook, with so much exposure to virus-affected Hong Kong, is looking grim. It does, though, have a stable team, led by a CEO about to complete five years in the ...

Carl Icahn looks increasingly likely to get his way, even if it’s not on his own terms. The activist investor’s fingerprints appear all over Xerox Holdings Corp.’s $35 billion attempt to acquire HP Inc. But it always looked as if he might prefer the deal to happen the other way around. Indeed, he pitched an acquisition of Xerox to HP ...

The Olympic torch will arrive in Japan on March 20 for a four-month relay to launch the opening ceremonies for the Tokyo summer games. But rather than anticipating the sight of Olympic torchbearers, much of Japan is fixated on a different relay: hundreds of masked passengers grimly walking off the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship in Yokohama. The ship has ...

India has more than a sixth of the world’s population. It’s also still a poor country. So what happens there is incredibly important for the welfare of the human race. For a long time, good things were happening in India. Cautious pro-business reforms in 1980s were followed by the dismantling of much of the country’s overbearing regulatory state in the ...