Opinion

Is Daimler AG out to prove that carmakers are the ultimate value trap? Its second profit warning in fourth months felt like a capitulation. A kitchen sink would struggle to contain the list of excuses the German car and truck maker produced to explain the latest profit shortfall on October 19. Unspecified diesel issues, disappointing bus sales, and the potential ...

You have to hand it to Europe’s regulators. They rarely miss a chance to antagonize an American tech company, no matter what the cost to their own people. In a blog post, Alphabet Inc.’s Google announced that it will start charging phone-makers that want to pre-install some of its apps and services for devices sold in Europe. This was the ...

A common refrain from some long-term China observers is that the government in Beijing can just wait out a significantly more confrontational US trade policy now that the initial shock is past. After all, the uncontested Asian powerhouse is on track to be the largest economy in the world. It also has a long tradition of government that shrewdly takes ...

If you find a tray of warmed-over chicken curry and a pocket-sized Greek salad at 35,000 feet an unappetising prospect, you’re not alone. The world’s airlines don’t much like it, either. Deutsche Lufthansa AG is exploring options including a sale for its catering arm LSG Sky Chefs, people with knowledge of the matter told Joyce Koh, Manuel Baigorri, Richard Weiss, ...

Facebook has been accused of misleading advertisers about the viewership of its video content. The important question isn’t whether the social-media company didn’t tell advertisers as soon as it knew it had inflated the numbers (it says it did) but whether the video-content boom, which the social network has actively fuelled since 2014, reflects any consumer demand. In 2016, the ...

It is a sign of the times — the kind involving the seven-horned beast, and the rain of fire, and the end of days — that recent news has been dominated by Kanye, Stormy and the misogynist boor who is president of these United States. It would be a circus if it were not a crime scene, complete with credible ...

Earlier this month, IKEA Group published its annual Life at Home report, which surveys more than 22,000 people in 22 countries. It’s an intriguing look at what the home-furnishings giant describes as the “four dimensions that are shared by everyone, no matter where or how we live — space, place, relationships and things.” Two of those elements, space and things, ...

If Bank OZK is any indication, investors will be a lot less patient with banks than they were a decade ago the next time trouble hits. Worse, OZK’s recent results may indicate that there is indeed trouble ahead. OZK, a midsize bank based in Little Rock, Arkansas, that has become one of the nation’s most aggressive commercial real estate lenders, ...

On Saturday, more than 100,000 people marched through central London to demand a second vote on Brexit. They’re about the only ones talking sense on the matter. No one knows where negotiations over the UK’s exit from the European Union will end up. (Things are not looking great.) But it’s now obvious that no one heading to the polls in ...

India’s government is caught in a bind. It needs money to appease voters ahead of a tighter-than-expected reelection campaign. But it’s also set praiseworthy deficit targets for itself that it’s already breached once. So it could use new ways to finance more spending. Such pressure often leads to bad decisions. This week, a senior official suggested that one solution might ...