Opinion

  For a guy who professes to be uncomfortable with extreme moves in currency markets, Haruhiko Kuroda certainly doesn’t seem to mind causing them. By doubling down on easy money, the Bank of Japan governor is set on a path that will only further isolate the country from its peers and almost guarantee further erosion in the value of the ...

Hong Kong was never a British colony, schoolchildren in the city will soon be taught. That may come as a surprise to the many parents who remember British governors, the Queen’s head on coins and stamps, and numerous other relics of a 150-year colonial presence. Behind the apparent absurdity is a deadly serious program to inculcate youth with the Communist ...

The beauty industry is having its department store moment: American cosmetics giant Revlon Inc, controlled by billionaire Ron Perelman, filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company had assets of $2.3 billion as of late April and total debts of $3.7 billion, Bloomberg News reported. It’s the clearest indication yet of the impact of shifting consumer habits on the beauty ...

  In commodity markets, there are few phenomena more feared than a corner. If a few traders become too dominant, they can at times set prices at will by withholding supply, driving values to ridiculous levels. That’s what happened when the Hunt brothers cornered the market in silver in 1980, sending it to prices that are still a record. In ...

  Last week’s surprisingly bad news on inflation — prices rose 8.6% in the year to May, the highest for 40 years — and the financial markets’ anxious reaction have seriously complicated the Federal Reserve’s job. With policy makers set to announce their latest interest rate decision along with projections for the rest of this year, the Fed’s prospects for ...

  The headquarters moves by Caterpillar Inc. and Boeing Co are a sign of how detached the corporate mailbox is becoming from industrial companies’ core manufacturing operations. Caterpillar announced that it would move its global headquarters to an existing office in Irving, Texas — part of the Dallas-Fort Worth area — from its current location in the Chicago suburb of ...

Over a decade ago, Elon Musk scoffed at the idea that China’s BYD Co was a legitimate competitor. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Now, Warren Buffett-backed BYD is set to wash out its closest rival in China, Tesla Inc. A BYD executive said that his company was “preparing to supply batteries to Tesla very soon.” The potential deal will ...

  There’s a lot of renewed belief that the sky has cleared for Chinese technology companies, and that now’s a good time to jump back into one of the most lucrative investment categories of the past decade. There are also plenty of reasons to remain skeptical. So the choice comes down to investors believing in climate change, though not in ...

  Beware the “lessons of history” as drawn by charlatans, ignoramuses or tyrants, for they will be daft, wrong and possibly disastrous. The self-serving amateur historiography of Russian President Vladimir Putin is an example. Last year, he invented a narrative “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which was subsequently revealed as one of the hallucinations that made him ...

Ping An Insurance Co has little chance of winning big backers for its quest to break up HSBC Holdings Plc if the best that can be said for the plan is a lackluster value analysis laid out by a Hong Kong-based consultancy. The Shenzhen-based insurer has been trying for months to convince HSBC that shareholders would value its Asian businesses ...