Opinion

Peak gold production is looking a little more distant. Global supply of the yellow metal has been inexorably approaching its high-water mark, as ore is extracted faster than new discoveries are made. Mines have been aging fast. A sustained price rally can change that picture, as investors rekindle their enthusiasm for large-scale exploration and technological innovation. Bullion miners’ margins will ...

Jeff Bezos was in India at an awkward moment. Just before his visit, the country’s antitrust authority ordered a probe into the business practices of its two main American-owned shopping websites. One of them is his. How worried should the Amazon.com Inc. boss be? If the Competition Commission’s released study on e-commerce is any guide, Bezos shouldn’t lose any sleep ...

Smoke and ash erupted from the Taal volcano in the Philippines, with the plume rising almost 9 miles into the atmosphere and threatening hundreds of thousands of people. The Philippine government mobilised quickly. By January 15, more than 38,000 people were staying in evacuation centers, and many thousands more had dispersed to family throughout the country. Meanwhile, the government began ...

The anguish is palpable. First, it was the news that India’s nominal gross domestic product is growing at its slowest pace in more than four decades. Now comes the inflation data for December, showing the steepest rise in consumer prices since July 2014. If this is the onset of stagflation, then it will be very hard to beat back the ...

If you need some clarity around social investing, don’t look to the world’s biggest money manager for help. Larry Fink, chief executive officer of BlackRock Inc., threw social investing into the spotlight in his annual letter to America’s CEOs. Climate change is an urgent problem, he said, and BlackRock will make it the center of its investment approach by “making ...

The global debt balloon continues to inflate — with what consequences no one knows. Could the balloon soon become a “bubble” that pops, causing a new financial crisis? It hardly seems impossible. The latest worldwide debt figures are not reassuring. In September, global debt of all varieties (government, business and consumer borrowing) totalled $253 trillion, up $9 trillion from the ...

Anglo American Plc is dabbling in creative M&A. Buying an English fertilizer project for just over $500 million, excluding debt, is more than manageable for a $35 billion mining giant that generated $1.3 billion in free cash flow in the first half of last year. It’s also a gamble on an unproven niche market that speaks to the paucity of ...

There’s an old saying in retail that despite all the bluster, not much really changes over the holiday shopping season: Those store groups that have been winning keep on doing so, while the losers continue to suffer. Target Corp. just became the exception to this rule. The big-box retailer has been a consistently strong performer over the past couple of ...

A would-be Boeing Co. takeover target has found its own dance partner. Woodward Inc., a maker of cockpit controls and engine-actuation systems, announced last week that it’s merging with fellow aerospace supplier Hexcel Corp. The all-stock deal values Hexcel, a maker of lightweight composite materials, at about $7.5 billion including debt, with Woodward shareholders set to own about 55% of ...

China is opening the deepest, darkest corner of its strained financial system to American financial institutions. It’s not clear why investors would want to go there, even with their eyes wide open. As part of President Donald Trump’s phase one trade deal, China will allow US institutions to apply for asset management company licenses (beginning with the provinces), permitting them ...