Opinion

Unilever NV has made a great deal of “instilling purpose” into its products, trying to flag up the social and environmental credentials of things from Dove shower gel to Magnum ice cream to appeal to millennial consumers. It doesn’t seem to be doing much for its sales. The Anglo-Dutch company surprised the stock market, warning that revenue growth this year ...

The upshot of a much-publicised Twitter altercation between climate activist Greta Thunberg and Germany’s state-owned rail operator, Deutsche Bahn: Train companies aren’t really ready for an increasing number of passengers who want to fly less to minimise their carbon footprint. Last week, Thunberg tweeted a picture of herself sitting on the floor in a train vestibule, next to a pile ...

Emmanuel Macron is the first French president in a decade who isn’t a baby boomer, and it shows. The 41-year-old’s battle to reform France’s high-tax, high-spend economy is often fought in the name of generational equality — largely by tilting the balance away from the elderly in favour of the young. Last year, as a gesture to help young people ...

Germany wants a rapid roll-out of 5G technology to sort out its creaking mobile phone network. Yet a group of German lawmakers wants to ban equipment made by China’s Huawei Technologies Co. The country can’t do both. There is an inevitable trade-off for any nation considering a block on Huawei’s telecoms gear. Sticking to the equipment produced by its big ...

The UK’s election of a right-wing, pro-market government with a thumping majority would certainly seem like a green light to foreign companies wanting to buy London-listed rivals. But the new political climate for takeovers may be hazier than it seems. Boris Johnson’s administration is still only four months old, so it’s hard to know precisely how it would approach a ...

It looks as if after all the talk, all the back-and-forth and all the market swings, the US and China have finally reached the terms of a “phase-one” trade deal. The message from the world’s biggest bond market: Don’t get too excited about what that means for the economic outlook. For the first half of the US trading session, long-term ...

Imagine if Toyota Motor Corp. stopped making Corollas, or Coca-Cola Co. stopped making Diet Coke, or McDonald’s Corp. stopped serving Big Macs. That’s the best way of looking at reports that Boeing Co. is considering halting production of its troubled 737 Max single-aisle jet. Making and servicing commercial airplanes accounts for about 80% of Boeing’s operating income, and the 737 ...

Why is the nation’s financial industry concentrated in just a few very costly cities? The latest actions by the Charles Schwab Corp. suggest there’s less reason than there once was amid the squeeze the industry has been feeling since the Great Recession ended. In Schwab’s case, the discount brokerage firm slashed its fees, said it would buy a main rival ...

As 2019 draws to a close, there’s more than a whiff of banking deregulation in the air. The US has relaxed its lender stress tests and made it easier again for Wall Street to trade using its own funds. In Europe, capital requirements are being softened. The reining in of bank risk after the financial crisis is giving way to ...

Brits haven’t felt very much like shopping this year, and understandably so. There’s been political gridlock and upheaval, the repeated threat of a hard Brexit and an election in December for the first time since 1923. No wonder despite strong employment, and wage growth outpacing inflation, UK consumers have been acting as if they’re in a recession. As a result, ...