Opinion

Hong Kong’s IPO market is unexpectedly coming back to life. It may be a brief revival. Companies from Anheuser-Busch InBev SA’s Asian unit to Megvii Technology Ltd. aim to raise more than $10 billion selling shares before the year is out. It’s a turnaround that appeared improbable as recently as mid-August, when Hang Seng Index erased its gain for the ...

Selling infant formula to China seems so 2016. The country abandoned its one-child policy three years ago, spurring expectations of a baby boom. These have been well and truly dashed. Fertility rates remain stuck around the levels they’ve been at for two decades, and the 15 million children born in 2018 was the lowest figure since 1961. Roughly five Indians ...

The attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas facilities in Abqaiq, which has suspended half of the kingdom’s processing — corresponding to 6% of world supply — is a blow to one of the main arteries of the global economy. The Trump administration should use the United Nations General Assembly this week in New York to marshal a global response. ...

India’s government will shortly find itself at a fork in the road. Will it choose globalisation and export-oriented growth? Or will the isolationists in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win, and keep India out of a giant Indo-Pacific trading bloc? This weekend, New Delhi hosted negotiators for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – from the 10 members of ...

It is not easy being in Christine Lagarde’s shoes. The incoming president of the European Central Bank (ECB) has not yet presided over her first Governing Council meeting, but she will have to face down a revolt over the central bank’s decision to restart quantitative easing before she even starts. Lagarde may want to thank Mario Draghi for pushing through ...

For years, thriving cities in coastal regions of the US have become increasingly expensive to live in. As cities such as San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles and Seattle became more attractive, thanks to booming knowledge industries and falling crime, rents soared: And for almost as long, people have been hotly debating what to do about the problem. Many ...

Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who will retire this month, is that rare senior official in Donald Trump’s Washington whose career and reputation don’t seem to have been tarnished by his dealings with the president. The explanation is simple: The low-key, Boston-Irish Marine maintained the distance and discipline of a professional military officer. He ...

Margrethe Vestager, famous for slapping vast fines on the likes of Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google during her tenure as the European Union’s top antitrust official, has been given the chance to do it all over again. She’s been handed the same job in Ursula von der Leyen’s proposed European Commission. Lest it be seen as some kind of ...

The maker of Aston Martin sports cars is considering raising cash from an expensive corner of the bond market. The hope must be that this is just one part of a more radical attempt to strengthen its finances — and not the last resort. Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc is looking at issuing an unsecured junk bond that’s rated ...

Europe is getting its own version of Softbank Group Corp. with the Amsterdam listing of tech investment firm Prosus NV. The move will likely help it avoid the fate of Yahoo Inc., the erstwhile Silicon Valley titan which has since fizzled away as a holding company. South African media and internet firm Naspers Ltd. has spun most of its technology ...