Opinion

“Only Facebook Ireland can respond to your concerns.” That is the response you are likely to get from Facebook Inc. if you accuse the world’s biggest social network of breaching Europe’s tough new laws on data privacy. The company’s European headquarters are in Ireland; data from its users in the region is officially controlled and processed there; and its lead ...

Breaking up an indebted German conglomerate was never going to be easy, but ThyssenKrupp AG boss Guido Kerkhoff probably hoped an enduring share price bounce would help smooth the process. Instead, ThyssenKrupp’s stock tumbled about 45 percent since he announced a plan to split the company’s steel and capital goods activities in September. The shares touched a 15-year low this ...

When the findings of a landmark UN report on biodiversity came out last week, the headlines ran the gamut from depressing to apocalyptic. One million species face extinction, readers were told. Almost a third of the world’s reef-forming coral species, more than a third of its marine mammals, and 40 percent of its amphibian species could die out. And that’s ...

It was the moment businesses exhaled and viewers switched the channel. On April 4, the UK parliament voted, by a margin of one, to ensure that the country wouldn’t leave the European Union (EU) without a deal. Brexit may or may not happen – but there would be no chaotic crashing out because parliament had vetoed it. Except, like a ...

By the looks of it, Toyota Motor Corp. is holding steady, even as other carmakers flail. But some caution is warranted. Toyota has consistently outperformed its rivals over the last year as the industry struggles with everything from technology adoption to tariffs. Its shares are down just 5 percent in the past year, compared with its peers’ average of almost ...

Five years ago, I wrote that Narendra Modi could be India’s Shinzo Abe. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The chief minister of Gujarat state had just been chosen by his party to become the next prime minister if it won the popular vote. Writing for Reuters then, I predicted he could lift the country’s drooping economy, just as Abe ...

The most intriguing and indisputable thing we have learned about economists in recent decades is that they don’t know nearly as much as they thought they knew. We see evidence of this all the time. Just recently, the Bureau of Labour Statistics reported that the economy had created 263,000 payroll jobs in April. This was almost 40% more than the ...

Thomas Cook Plc is on a trip it would rather forget. The company is battling a crisis of investor confidence. A rough 2018 for bookings hammered the share price and leverage has soared. At the latest seasonal peak, net debt of 1.6 billion pounds dwarfed its market capitalisation of 330 million pounds. Sentiment worsened after reports on May 2 that ...

The technology nonprofit WattTime announced that, thanks to a $1.7 million grant from Google.org, it will use satellite technology to measure air pollution from every large power plant in the world. This effort, which will combine data “from a variety of sensors operating at different wavelengths,” will also use artificial intelligence to analyse and calculate carbon emissions, according to David ...

Democracy’s return to Venezuela has once again been deferred. Juan Guaido, the leader of the National Assembly recognised as interim president by more than 50 countries, failed last week to persuade the military to unseat Nicolas Maduro. Few officers rallied to Guaido’s side, and the regime beat back his followers’ street protests. Whatever the reason — overconfidence on Guaido’s part, ...