Opinion

In the end, Italy’s red wall held up against Matteo Salvini’s assault. The leader of right-wing League had hoped to score a famous win in a regional election in Emilia-Romagna, an area with strong leftist traditions. Voters thought otherwise: Stefano Bonaccini, incumbent Democratic Party governor, won convincingly against his opponent, Lucia Borgonzoni. The populist Five Star Movement collapsed to less ...

The bitter 2018 vintage of British initial public offerings is souring with age. After the dramatic fall of Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc and Funding Circle Holdings Plc, yet another shock came on January 27 from subprime lender Amigo Holdings Plc, which listed around the same time. The company said the environment was worsening and that its founder and ...

In the chilly and rarefied air of Davos, recent days saw yet another surge in the temperature of the world’s debate on climate change. While Greta Thunberg led pleas to political leaders at the World Economic Forum for urgent action to avert climate catastrophe, Donald Trump used the same platform to denounce “prophets of doom.” The virtual confrontation between Trump ...

As part of his promise to deliver the benefits of Brexit after the UK leaves the European Union on January 31, Boris Johnson has set a goal of doubling the rate of economic growth after the UK leaves the European Union (EU). That aspiration could be treated as a rhetorical flourish, like Donald Trump’s belief that the United States can ...

The consensus is that the US consumer is still strong enough to propel the economy forward even though the manufacturing sector has weakened. This view underpins expectations for improved corporate earnings in 2020. But the hard economic data strikes a discordant note. In particular, growth in industrial production on a year-over-year basis remains in a decisive downturn, sliding deeper into ...

Being a shopping-mall landlord is a risky business in the age of e-commerce, even in retail-crazy Singapore. So it’s only sensible that CapitaLand Mall Trust is merging with CapitaLand Commercial Trust, which owns offices. The $6.2 billion deal between the two sister real estate investment trusts, or REITs, will create a property owner of some heft. The combined entity will ...

As America weighs abuses of power in this season of impeachment and trial, it’s worth taking a careful second look at the FBI’s behaviour in its “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016. Republicans are outraged by what happened, and Democrats should be, too. It’s not that the FBI’s misdeeds excuse those of Donald Trump’s. Quite the opposite: ...

Cord-cutting isn’t stopping. As it turns out, that’s not such bad news for cable giants like Comcast Corp. It is, however, for AT&T Inc. The streaming wars intensified in the fourth quarter amid Walt Disney Co.’s advertising blitz for its new Disney+ service that overtook billboards, shopping malls, public transit and Twitter feeds. At the same time, Apple Inc. began ...

Have you ever shopped online for something (say, a hotel room) and selected an option with an excellent price only to learn, at the time of checkout, that the price is much higher than originally advertised? That happens a lot. A key reason is that advertised prices often exclude taxes and fees. Even if there is some disclosure of that ...

Oil succumbed to the coronavirus because its immune system was compromised already. Amid headlines about quarantined Chinese cities and dozens of potential cases showing up in the US, Brent crude closed on January 24 at $60 and change, its lowest since Halloween. This is all the more remarkable when you consider January has seen several geopolitical shocks stretching from Libya ...