Opinion

Japan Inc. is leaping into the future of cars, courtesy of SoftBank Group Corp. On October 3, Honda Motor Co. announced a $2.75 billion investment in General Motors Co.’s self-driving subsidiary Cruise, a departure from the Japanese carmaker’s tight-fisted approach to technology spending. That follows SoftBank Vision Fund’s $2.25 billion outlay just months ago. With these, GM Cruise is now ...

Should we just give up now? The world’s electrical utilities need to reduce coal consumption by at least 60 percent over the two decades through 2030 to avoid the worst effects of climate change that could occur with more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced on Monday. Such a ...

I suspect that long-time watchers of China’s reform efforts may not be that enthusiastic about yesterday’s decision by the country’s central bank to cut the required reserve ratios for banks. Although understandable as a short-term response to a more challenging growth environment, it risks being another attempt to crank up an old economic- model whose effectiveness has declined and whose ...

There were howls of outrage when the Labour Party said earlier this year that it would force the Bank of England (BOE) to set a target for productivity if it won power. The announcement by the Conservative government that Andy Haldane, the central bank’s chief economist, will head a new Industrial Strategy Council is similarly distasteful. The new body “has ...

In signing the Paris climate agreement, the world’s governments pledged to keep the global average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. Leaving aside that their collective efforts and plans to curb greenhouse gases are not enough to accomplish that — the goal itself turns out to be too modest to prevent disastrous warming. Today’s report from the United ...

Over the last two decades, China has invested more than $125 billion in Africa to build ports, highways, airports, railways and other infrastructure. Chinese President Xi Jinping says funds, to the tune of $60 billion, will continue to flow because “inadequate infrastructure is believed to be the biggest bottleneck to Africa’s development.” China’s largesse has certainly benefited the continent. An ...

Putting state assets into private hands was the boring consensus of the 1990s; now, it’s only for the brave. In Britain, Jeremy Corbyn is tapping into public anger at the poor quality of private railways and utilities, and promises to re-nationalise them. In Italy, the deadly collapse of a motorway bridge has led the government to try and revoke the ...

What’s the appropriate board gift for a CEO’s two-year anniversary? If you’re Tim Sloan at Wells Fargo & Co., the correct answer is a short leash. Sloan took over the CEO role in mid-October 2016, which means the anniversary is this week. At the very least, Sloan badly underestimated the problems facing his bank. But he’s also been slow to ...

President Donald Trump’s trade war is less bad than it was just a short time ago. After some tense negotiations, the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) has been replaced with a new, very similar arrangement, meaning the disruption to trade — and to US relations with Canada and Mexico — will be contained. The agreement might even ease the ...

With Comcast Corp.’s 12-part, $27 billion jumbo bond offering to fund its acquisition of Sky Plc, the US cable giant is on the path to joining a select group of companies with more than $100 billion of debt. But what’s just as noteworthy is the club that Comcast chose to avoid. Comcast will likely keep its A- and A3 credit ...