Opinion

There was only one plausible outcome in the long, tortured saga of Sears Holdings Corp., and it has finally arrived. The retailing giant, which includes its eponymous department store and the Kmart discount chain, said it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It is set to close 142 unprofitable stores near the end of the year and Eddie Lampert, the ...

Investors need a reason to invest in European initial public offerings (IPOs). All they are getting are reasons not to. Medical devices firm Convatec Group Plc – one of the star debuts of 2016 – issued a massive profit warning on Monday, just as Spain’s Cepsa pulled what would have been the biggest oil IPO in a decade. Europe’s new ...

Prepare for a crackdown on China’s overheated rental market. President Xi Jinping’s push to develop housing for lease was supposed to take the edge off soaring home prices. It hasn’t worked out that way. Rents instead have rocketed as the government’s call triggered a stampede of investment into the sector, fueling discontent among a millennial population that had already been ...

The staggering tariffs being levied on China will almost certainly test President Donald Trump’s claim that “trade wars are easy to win.” He might be right, but the president doesn’t seem to have contemplated a different question: What happens when trade wars come to an end? When one country imposes tariffs on another, the eventual resolution of the conflict does ...

In recent years, the so-called “Amazon effect” has been used to explain low inflation in developed economies: Prices are supposedly lower – and more transparent – online, forcing offline retailers to reduce prices. The effect, however, can go both ways – the influence of e-commerce makes prices fluctuate more often, reacting immediately to shocks like energy price and exchange rate ...

For its roads, power stations and other useful assets to live, a bankrupt Indian infrastructure lender must die. Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. (IL&FS) was seized by the government this month after unexpected defaults on its $12.5 billion of debt spread panic through money and equity markets. A new six-member board chaired by banker Uday Kotak will have to sort ...

The finance ministers and central bankers from almost 190 countries who gathered in Bali for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank (IMF) drove, I suspect, the final nail into the coffin of the notion of a synchronized pickup in global growth. In a tone that contrasted with the optimism of their spring meetings in April, ...

Few talked about Northern Ireland during the Brexit referendum. Yet it could now dash Prime Minister Theresa May’s hopes of a deal with the European Union (EU) and threaten 20 years of peace and prosperity in Ireland. A coalition of hardliners within May’s Conservatives and a small party from Northern Ireland that has provided her parliamentary majority since last year’s ...

If there’s an upside to a downturn it’s that short sellers get to make a buck. By borrowing shares, investors can sell what they don’t own. If the price falls, they buy the stock back at a cheaper level and return it to the lender (with interest), pocketing the difference. Assuming the shares fall enough and borrowing costs aren’t too ...

If Sen. Ben Sasse is right — he has not recently been wrong about anything important — the nation’s most-discussed political problem is entangled with the least-understood public health problem. The political problem is furious partisanship. The public health problem is loneliness. Sasse’s new book argues that Americans are richer, more informed and ‘connected’ than ever — and unhappier, more ...