Opinion

On global climate change, I’ve changed my mind — just slightly. I’ve written about this issue for more than two decades, and my theme has been monotonously consistent. As a starting point, I’ve accepted the prevailing scientific view that man-made greenhouse gases contribute to global warming. But I’ve been routinely pessimistic and skeptical that we can do much about it. ...

Greece’s prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, survived a confidence vote in parliament and seems likely to obtain legislative approval for his highly controversial deal with neighboring Macedonia. Now he can contemplate his legacy, as he serves out what are likely to be his last months in office. The vote’s outcome was no surprise. Tsipras likely was certain of victory before the ...

New year, new you. And Associated British Foods Plc’s Primark is fully behind the January fitness fad. Strange, then, that investors are staying home on the sofa. Leggings, lightweight jackets and the like are on offer in colors and designs that wouldn’t look out of place in upmarket athleisure specialist Sweaty Betty. But Primark’s leggings are cheaper by a long ...

US President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un have agreed to meet for a second summit at the end of next month. Agreeing to this was probably a mistake — but to have any hope of producing results, Trump will have to prepare much more carefully than he did last time. There’s been virtually no progress in ...

One year in, how’s President Donald Trump’s mission to save the US steel and aluminum sectors going? Judging by the stock prices of metal producers, you could be mistaken for thinking he’s trying to destroy the industry instead. The aggregate market capitalisation of the seven major US primary steel and aluminum producers — Nucor Corp., US Steel Corp., AK Steel ...

France has done the right thing by paving the way for Carlos Ghosn’s succession at the top of automaker Renault SA. Whatever the merits of the legal case against the CEO in Japan, he remains in custody, has been denied bail, and his trial could be at least six months away. This is not an executive who’s able to properly ...

Hello, Amazon? Are you there? If ever there was a moment for an international retailing behemoth to pick up a British store chain, this is it. While Christmas trading didn’t turn out to be the bloodbath that many — including myself — had feared, valuations remain in the doldrums. The FTSE 350 General Retailers Index has bounced since the end ...

We are in the midst of a worldwide credit boom that may be without precedent. The debt explosion suggests that the global economy — all the national economies combined — is being driven heavily by massive government and private borrowing. Is this debt buildup stable? Or is it the harbinger of a sharp economic slowdown or crash? No one really ...

The reaction from Paris to Theresa May’s crushing defeat on her Brexit vote has been telling. Where people in the UK have assumed until now that President Emmanuel Macron was more concerned about grabbing finance jobs from the City of London, his focus appears to have shifted since the emergence of the gilets jaunes protesters. This week, France’s preparations for ...

Tens of thousands of retail and tech professionals descended on New York for the National Retail Federation’s Big Show, an annual industry confab where exhibitors show off new innovations and the crowd collectively scoffs at the idea of any kind of looming retail apocalypse. The great sport of the event is wandering the rows of booths and trying to separate ...