Opinion

The European Central Bank (ECB) faces many thorny issues as it embarks on its first monetary policy strategy review in nearly two decades. From the setting of the bank’s inflation target, to its role in tackling climate change, the famed diplomatic skills of President Christine Lagarde will be tested. One aspect of the review should prove uncontroversial, however: The ECB ...

In the lumbering takeover battle for HP, Carl Icahn-backed Xerox Holdings Corp. had been wielding plenty of stick, so it was about time for some carrot. What came was more of a crudite, but it might just be the appetizer that HP needs. In the three months since Xerox’s initial bid, Icahn, who’s already the biggest investor in Xerox, took ...

The coronavirus outbreak is already threatening oil markets. The fear of lower demand — from a disease-stricken China and eventually globally as the economic impact widens — has destabilised prices, sending crude to its lowest levels in more than a year. For major oil-producing countries, the declines, coming at a time of curtailed output, threaten economic shocks that if long-lasting ...

Every time a region of the world goes from being poor to being rich one country tends to be responsible for getting the process started. In Europe that was the UK, which was the first to industrialise. In East Asia it was Japan. In West Africa it could be Ghana. Ghana has a number of big advantages over other countries ...

A wealth tax and a ban on hydraulic fracking, both of which have the support of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, would address seemingly separate issues. Yet they stem from a common impulse, one that also undergirds the current trade war: to use the tax code to punish those seen as responsible for unfairness, even if doing so hurts the ...

There’s been a spate of stories about the troubles of high-frequency trading (HFT) firms. This is no temporary downswing. The factors that allowed successful firms to trade actively for a decade with seemingly no losing days are gone and there’s no reason to expect them back. Nevertheless, HFT will be as important a force in the market in the 2020s ...

Asia’s largest budget carrier is in trouble, caught up in an anti-corruption investigation of Europe’s aerospace industry. Things could get worse. AirAsia Bhd. Chief Executive Officer Tony Fernandes stepped down for two months along with Chairman Kamarudin Meranun, after the airline was named in a 3.6 billion euro ($4 billion) settlement of bribery allegations against Airbus SE. Shares have fallen ...

There has been plenty of talk about how the coronavirus might affect politics in China, for example by eroding trust between the Chinese public and its leadership. In the US, however, the coronavirus is likely to have the opposite effect: Namely, to make the incumbent more popular and to increase the re-election chances of President Donald Trump. How the coronavirus ...

It may just take the likes of Paul Elliott Singer to make SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son adjust his approach. Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. has taken a $2.5 billion stake in the Japanese company — that’s about 3% — with a view to bend Son’s ear, the Wall Street Journal reported. Elliott confirmed to Bloomberg Opinion that it invested in ...

Coronavirus is spreading at an accelerating rate, but inappropriate quarantines and travel bans could cause more havoc than the disease itself. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has a duty to protect human health, but also an obligation to protect the world’s citizens from the human rights violations or unnecessary economic hardship that panic could cause. So far, they’re doing a ...