Opinion

In a few weeks, India’s finance minister will present what’s called an “interim budget” — the accounts of the year gone by, as well as his plans for the year to come. It isn’t supposed to be a regular budget because the government faces reelection in a few months; the convention is that the next finance minister gets to make ...

After sending rival Uber Technologies Inc. packing from Singapore and other Southeast Asian markets, homegrown ride-hailing firm Grab Pte. set itself a stiffer target. It wants to be a regional super-app. Think of it as a digital conglomerate that hooks customers for one thing, only to promise them value for several others, sort of like a Netflix Inc. subscription that ...

Despite its lobbying, Google can’t seem to win in Europe. The French privacy watchdog has blown through the US internet giant’s claim to comply with data-protection legislation, and its threat to pull its news-aggregation service in the region will likely prove far less effective than the company expects. Google’s troubles with the European Union’s antitrust authorities are well-known: the company ...

Half or a quarter of the way through this interesting experiment with an incessantly splenetic presidency, much of the nation has become accustomed to daily mortifications. Or has lost its capacity for embarrassment, which is even worse. If the country’s condition is calibrated simply by economic data — if, that is, America is nothing but an economy — then the ...

The European Central Bank (ECB) needs to wake up. Of all major central banks, it’s the one that really should be reacting to an evident economic slowdown in its backyard. There’s a danger this might turn into a recession, Europe’s third in a decade. But being proactive is not in its nature. Its Achilles’ heel is running monetary policy via ...

Vivendi SA’s plans for Telecom Italia SpA haven’t quite been dealt a sucker punch by Italian regulators. But they – and billionaire Vincent Bollore, who controls the firm – certainly received a blow. The focus should now shift to the carrier’s underlying business, and it needs to do so soon. The communications regulator said the plan, proposed by then-CEO Amos ...

This week, France’s data-protection regulator demanded that Google pay a record fine for violating Europe’s expansive new privacy rules. The tab? About $57 million. The purpose? Hmm. In its ruling, the regulator alleged that Google fails to adequately explain how it collects data to offer personalised advertising. Some information is “excessively disseminated” across different documents. Some requires more than one ...

At the moment, despite strong competition from the US, Britain leads the industrialised world in political breakdown. Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan for Brexit has been crushingly rejected by the House of Commons yet the government plods on robotically. As May explained: One, she has heard what Parliament just said and respects it; two, her deal with Europe is the ...

Watch out, electric-car battery makers — Toyota Motor Corp. has arrived. Asia’s biggest automaker is setting up a joint venture with Panasonic Corp. to produce batteries for partners such as its Daihatsu unit, Mazda Motor Corp. and Subaru Corp. that together account for more than 20 percent of global car production. Toyota will own 51 percent of the venture, to ...

Errant debtors are forever looking for ways to undermine creditor protection; but when lenders themselves start making a mockery of a fledgling insolvency law, nobody can save it. That’s where India’s two-year-old bankruptcy regime is today, brought to the brink of irrelevance by the strain of resolving its most high-profile case: Essar Steel India Ltd. The billionaire Ruia brothers have ...