Opinion

Last year, I wasn’t sure that Twitter Inc.’s recovery was real. Now, it looks as if it is. Twitter is not out of the woods, but it’s clear the company has stabilised financially after a long stretch of wobbles. Advertising sales rose 18 percent in the first quarter, the company reported. That was the fifth consecutive period of healthy gains. ...

Limiting climate change means curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, it’s well known. But controlling emissions won’t be enough by itself to stop global temperatures from warming uncomfortably beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. Carbon dioxide already in the air needs to be cleared away too. By the end of this century, up to a trillion tons of carbon dioxide will have to be removed, ...

Emmanuel Macron is trying to be something new in French politics — a president who responds to public concerns without dropping his reforms at the first sign of trouble. Instead he has tried to air public grievances and react without caving into protesters’ demands. For this he deserves credit. To pull France out of the economic troubles that have created ...

Over the next 20 years, what will be the most unexpectedly transformative technology? It’s a question that’s been asked of me more than once recently, and my counterintuitive answer is the automobile — and I am not referring to self-driving vehicles. Often innovation comes most strongly in basic, frequently used services, where the value proposition is already well established. So ...

Standard Chartered Plc Chief Executive Officer Bill Winters is going make a lot of shareholders, including its largest stockholder Temasek Holdings Pte, very happy. Having paid out a $1 billion fine for violating Iran sanctions, the bank had cleared the decks for buybacks to cheer disgruntled shareholders and boost its return on tangible equity. On April 29, the bank delivered. ...

The UK government’s decision to publish a job listing for the next Bank of England (BOE) governor has prompted speculation over who will replace Mark Carney and where he or she should come from. But the issue of when the next bank chief should be expected to step down from the role is just as important. Philip Hammond, Chancellor of ...

Three days before Joe Biden dove back into the deep end of the political pool, a rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said the terrorist who bombed the 2013 Boston Marathon, and everyone else in America’s prisons, should be allowed to vote, lest the “chipping away” of voting rights leave America “running down a slippery slope.” Such running — to be ...

Tidjane Thiam, chief executive of Credit Suisse Group AG, says one of his most senior managers has told him not to be too bullish. He should heed the warning. The Swiss bank reported first-quarter earnings that beat estimates for both net income and revenue. Wealth management assets increased by a net 5 percent, marking a rebound from the end of ...

European shareholder activism has suffered a painfully public humiliation. The lesson for investors is clear: Pick your battles. Paris-based investment fund CIAM wanted to split the chairman and CEO roles at French re-insurer Scor SE, which has been run for 17 years by Denis Kessler. In addition, it tried to prevent the reelection of the company’s lead independent director Augustin ...

President Donald Trump keeps attacking the Federal Reserve, and has recently moved toward appointing loyalists to the Fed’s governing board. This has sparked fears that he might gain some control over the world’s most powerful central bank, getting it to do his bidding rather than what’s best for the economy in the long term. Are those fears justified? Although my ...