Opinion

The maker of Aston Martin sportscars is finally moving to remedy a botched initial public offering that gave it neither the money nor the investors it needed. January 31 brought a cash injection, a new shareholder and a shift in strategy. Crisis measures never come cheap and the rescue comes with many strings attached. Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc, ...

Another blowout quarter for Amazon.com Inc. earnings spurred a 10% jump in its shares in post-market trading, pushing the retail giant’s value past $1 trillion. To gauge just how powerful Amazon.com Inc. truly is, though, look beyond its market cap, top-line sales or membership revenue and look at the so-called Amazon Tax. This is how much the company gets from ...

There have been two prominent instances in recent years of governments offering huge monetary incentives in exchange for an office or factory. Both have turned out badly. The first was former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s $4.5 billion package to win a factory from Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn. The factory never made economic sense and — to no one’s surprise — ...

Nomura Holdings Inc.’s overseas operations are at last solidly in the black after years of flip-flopping between expansion and retrenchment. After a fourth straight quarterly profit, the Japanese brokerage is primed for its biggest international test: building a wealth management business in China. This time, it has a real chance of success. Last week, Nomura reported net income of $524 ...

Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) been a trailblazer in promoting the need to incorporate environmental, social and governance issues into the day-to-day job of portfolio construction. With $1.6 trillion under management, it has a lot of firepower in the investing world. So its recent stand against short selling, judging the practice to be incompatible with its role as the ...

It’s an economic mystery worth solving. Conventional wisdom holds that long-term job relationships between workers and their employers are breaking down. We’ve all seen and heard countless heart-breaking stories of firms firing large numbers of career workers. Labour markets provide less stability and security than in the past, it seems. And yet, this belief seems to clash with hard evidence. ...

There’s a fine line between a fudge and a workable compromise. In Britain’s handling of Huawei Technologies Co., Prime Minister Boris Johnson has just about managed to secure the latter. The UK has brushed off the US’s complaints and decided to allow its telecoms operators to install equipment made by “high-risk vendors” — read: Huawei — in their networks. But ...

China was supposed to be crucial to Apple Inc.’s future. A tech-savvy audience, impressive mobile infrastructure and growing wealth had executives and investors believing the world’s most populous country would drive growth. So far, the data indicate otherwise. The Greater China region — which comprises China, Hong Kong and Taiwan — just posted yet another period of underperformance, contributing little ...

You can’t turn a supertanker quickly, as the old saying goes. Bailing out, on the other hand, takes no time at all. The last week’s double dose of weak Big Oil earnings from Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. followed hard on the heels of Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s debacle on January 30. Shares of both companies were down about ...

Airlines are perpetually on the alert against crashes. That doesn’t mean the coronavirus epidemic will lead to any corporate disasters. The outbreak that originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan could push some airlines in Asia to the wall, according to Alan Joyce, chief executive officer of Australia’s biggest carrier Qantas Airways Ltd. “A lot of airlines may not be ...