Opinion

The Chinese have always lived by the saying “better broken jade than intact tile.” This explains why Chinese TV anchor Liu Xin picked out jade earrings and a jade pendant necklace to wear in her much-hyped debate on the US-China trade war with Fox anchor Trish Regan. The meaning of the jewelry, apparent to millions of Chinese who watched the ...

Greece’s banks have staged a spectacular stock market rally this year. Shares of two of the country’s top four lenders – Piraeus Bank SA and National Bank of Greece SA — have more than doubled. The possibility of a change in government has spurred the latest bump — but investors’ optimism may be premature. Fundamentally, little has changed since last ...

Economists tend to categorise countries by their per-capita income levels. The best known is the World Bank’s system, which classifies countries into low, lower-middle, upper-middle and high income, according to the per capita gross national income: Other international development agencies, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations, tend to adopt the World Bank’s taxonomy when distinguishing countries ...

Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley has staked his own personal success on rebuilding the British bank’s securities unit. That pursuit of Wall Street stardom may be leading the firm into treacherous territory. The remnants of a team disbanded years ago is making millions of dollars for the bank by gaming tax loopholes, Bloomberg News reported. The traders arrange ...

Cash is fungible. So if a company suddenly has $1 billion more of it, does it matter where it comes from? For Jaguar Land Rover, it should. In its latest results, the iconic UK car company, owned by Tata Motors Ltd., posted around 1.4 billion pounds of free cash flow ($1.77 billion). That’s a sharp turnaround from a running cash-burn ...

With the Huawei case, as with so many other Trump administration gambits, the puzzling question is whether the president is using tough tactics to make a deal — or whether he really means to put China’s most powerful telecommunications company on what’s informally known as the “kill list” by denying it US technology. US financial markets have been fairly calm ...

The European Parliament elections were meant to mark the high point of populism in Europe. Instead, they may have led to the political demise of its earliest champion: Alexis Tsipras. Greece’s prime minister, who stunned the continent with a double win in consecutive general elections in 2015, has called a snap vote that will probably be held at the beginning ...

The downside of being the most liquid emerging market currency is that it’s hard to avoid the impact when investors turn cold on risk assets. Unfortunately, South Africa’s rand has other issues to wrestle with too. The currency has recovered some of its poise after a selloff last week. But even as the political situation settles, there’s another technical dynamic ...

Debate continues about how much the costs of this trade war fall on China vs. the US, but the American contributions to that debate are overlooking some of the biggest victims: the countries “caught in the middle.” The current trade war is making it harder for many countries, and many businesspeople, to maintain even a partly pro-American stance. Take Pakistan, ...

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again.” Every British schoolchild has been brought up on this idiom. Theresa May is clearly no exception. She tried to get her deal through the House of Commons three times, and three times she was defeated. There’s another adage, allegedly American: “If you’re in a hole, stop digging.” All that ...