Opinion

Aston Martin needs James Bond armour

The company behind Aston Martin should take the plunge and raise some equity while it can. Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc doesn’t need the money immediately. But the historic sportscar maker may in the future, and it would be better to secure the cushion now before its window of opportunity shuts entirely. The brief 21 percent share price fall ...

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WeWork takes startup-mania era to its logical extreme

I confided to a colleague that the WeWork Cos IPO filing reminded me of a lower-stakes Mueller report. Truly. It was good for WeWork, as it was for President Donald Trump, that the public had a chance over years to process in small doses the wild events described in those very different tomes. Without the history of WeWork reporting from ...

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Oxymorons in ‘national conservative’ policies

Regimes, however intellectually disreputable, rarely are unable to attract intellectuals eager to rationalise the regimes’ behaviour. America’s current administration has “national conservatives.” They advocate unprecedented expansion of government in order to purge America of excessive respect for market forces, and to affirm robust confidence in government as a social engineer allocating wealth and opportunity. They call themselves conservatives, perhaps because ...

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Ukraine enjoys a hopeful moment

Nobody expected Ukraine’s economy to grow as fast as it did in the second quarter. Though the growth was driven, in large part, by a bumper wheat harvest, the optimistic numbers can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskiy promises a new kind of politics and investment-friendly change. Ukraine’s real gross domestic product increased by 4.6 percent ...

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OCBC, do you have Jakarta’s blessing?

“Do you have Jakarta’s blessing?” That’s the first question Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. CEO Samuel Tsien will be asked by investors about his plan to buy Indonesia’s PT Bank Permata. OCBC is weighing a bid for Standard Chartered Plc’s Indonesian bank, Bloomberg News has reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Deliberations are still at an early stage and may ...

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UK’s inverted yield curve is nothing like America’s

Inverted yield curves are the hot topic of the summer, especially as UK gilts have followed US treasuries by offering more interest on two-year maturities than you’ll get on 10-year notes. When the sovereign bond world is flipped on its head like this it’s often seen as an indicator of looming recession as investors scramble for the relative safety of ...

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Trump is not crazy to want to buy Greenland

Former Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen called US President Donald Trump’s reported idea of buying Greenland, a self-governed Danish territory, an out-of-season April’s Fool joke. Trump’s idea may be outlandish (and impossible) but that doesn’t mean there’s no benefit in thinking about reviving the market in sovereign territories, which once made America great. Besides acquiring Louisiana from France, Florida ...

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Touch-screens in cars don’t make us safer

Two years ago, 10 sailors died when the US Navy’s guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain collided with a chemical tanker off Singapore. An investigation has determined that insufficient training and inadequate operating procedures were to blame, and both factors were related to a new touch-screen-based helm control system. The Navy has decided to revert its destroyers back to ...

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How Asian nations can protect their crazy riches

With support for globalisation and free trade declining in much of the world, Asia has a historic chance to break out of its traditional role as a capital exporter to the West and to instead redirect flows to improve its own economies and financial industries. According to some estimates, the region’s pool of wealth at $110 trillion exceeds those of ...

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US businesses are stuck in trade war uncertainty

The tariff burden from the US-China trade conflict is “falling almost 100 percent on China,” President Donald Trump’s senior economic adviser Larry Kudlow argued last week. But take a look at what’s happening to business investment in the US, and it’s obvious Kudlow is wrong. Some businesses stand to gain from the president’s trade policy — especially those that compete ...

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