Opinion

Walmart Inc. has been battling to take on Amazon.com Inc., but it was weakness in old-fashioned categories of retailing, not whizzy tech, that undermined its holiday performance and prompted it to come up short of expectations for this year. And that pressure’s not going away anytime soon, considering the continued onslaught from rivals that excel at back-to-basics shopkeeping, such as ...

If there’s one thing everyone knows about President Donald Trump, it’s that he loves a captive audience — the larger and more enthusiastic, the better. This is one of the many things he has in common with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On February 24, both of them will have a chance to indulge their shared passion. Trump is to ...

Who says China’s vast bureaucratic machine is too busy fighting the coronavirus to do anything else? The country is finally speeding up its creaky bankruptcy process after two years of record defaults. Within one day of filing paperwork, a Beijing court has accepted a creditor’s application to start the restructuring process for Peking University Founder Group — a state-linked conglomerate ...

Concluding a week-long visit to Argentina to collect data and meet economic officials, the International Monetary Fund staff (IMF) mission issued a statement notable for what it says and what it doesn’t. It marks the beginning of yet another round of more formal consultations and highlights one of the most complex, if not the most complex, country cases to face ...

While candidates jostle for advantage in the Democratic presidential primary, and the news media play the odds, President Donald Trump already knows the identity of his opponent. Indeed, his campaign, with the full support of the Republican Party, is already waging a vigorous crusade to destroy his opposition. No, it’s not Joe Biden, who inspired Trump’s shakedown of Ukraine. Trump’s ...

The euro zone’s response to the sovereign debt crisis is usually associated with austerity. Yet some member nations have forged their own path: Spain and Portugal, for example, overhauled their labour and product markets, helping them return to growth. Now, these structural reforms are under threat in Madrid, as a left-wing coalition of the Socialist Party and Podemos wants to ...

Jupiter Fund Management Plc is getting something of a bargain in its purchase of Merian Global Investors, based on the post-announcement pop in the acquiring firm’s share price. Odd, then, that the deal has a clause that could see a dramatic drop in the takeout price if the target firm stumbles in the next two years. Jupiter is paying 370 ...

One of the world’s most pivotal economies is reeling from a self-induced policy mistake. Japan is now paying the price for last quarter’s consumption-tax hike, just as it begins to wrestle with the impact of the coronavirus. Japan’s gross domestic product tanked 6.3% in the final three months of 2019, the Cabinet Office said, almost twice the drop economists anticipated ...

Before a scandal dashed Benjamin Griveaux’s hopes of becoming the next mayor of Paris, the preferred candidate of French President Emmanuel Macron could be found promoting his answer to the capital city’s increasingly dysfunctional housing market. What the average priced-out Parisian needed, according to Griveaux, was a handout of 100,000 euros ($108,380) to use as down-payment in return for a ...

Bullion prices are at their highest in seven years, closing in on $1,600 an ounce. Gold held by exchange-traded funds is at all-time records and rising, thanks to worries over the economic damage inflicted by the coronavirus outbreak. Reserves, meanwhile, are depleting. It’s a heady mixture for miners, but perhaps not yet an intoxicating one. Take Polyus PJSC, Russia’s largest ...