Opinion

Coca-Cola Co.’s thirst for an alternative to sugary drinks has proved a boon for Whitbread CEO Alison Brittain. She announced the sale of the Costa Coffee chain to the US beverage giant for 3.9 billion pounds ($5.1 billion). Brittain has been able to capitalise on the fact that coffee is piping hot right now: In May, Nestle SA paid $7.15 ...

President Donald Trump talked tough against Mexico, and then essentially agreed to renew the existing trade deal and called that a victory. If only the China spat could end the same way. It won’t. That’s because the gulf between Beijing and Washington is not just caused by recent rhetoric and tariffs. It also goes beyond national security concerns. The inevitable ...

US Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed a bill — the Accountable Capitalism Act — that would require large companies to create corporate charters that take account of the interests of workers, customers and communities in addition to shareholders. To enforce this dictum, it would give each company’s employees the power to elect 40 percent of the corporate directors. Right now, ...

When there’s no trick left to defend a spectacularly failed experiment, blame Raghuram Rajan. If India’s top policy think tank is to be believed, the reason economic growth faltered last year, reaching 5.6% in the June quarter after 7.6% nine months earlier, had nothing to do with the November 2016 ban on 86% of the country’s cash. The decline had ...

Meituan Dianping wants to be everything to everyone: It even describes its mission as “helping people eat better, live better” in its preliminary IPO prospectus. With these broad ambitions, the Chinese food-delivery giant is sounding out investors for a valuation of $45 billion to $55 billion. Its plans to raise up to $4.5 billion in a Hong Kong IPO would ...

When they discuss the currency crisis, senior officials from Argentina and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will seek a response that strikes a balance between domestic policy changes and external financing aid, a task that has been complicated by political and trust issues. While Argentina is almost certain to get some concessions from the IMF, a decisive solution will be ...

Aren’t the strong meant to end up eating the weak? That’s not what’s happening in Australia, where Vodafone Hutchison Australia Ltd. or VHA — an unlisted company with negative net assets and A$7.57 billion of net debt at the end of 2017 — is on paper carrying out a takeover of TPG Telecom Ltd. While the deal is billed as ...

The US economy will grow a bit faster than China. Huh? That’s not a typo. It’s one of the projections in a fascinating OECD paper sketching scenarios for the world through 2060. Other developments canvassed: China’s share of global output peaks in the 2030s and then declines while India’s slice keeps rising. Indonesia’s economy catches up to its population. The ...

The fog surrounding Britain’s decision to leave the European Union shows no sign yet of clearing. The UK exits the union next March — but, more than two years after the country voted to go, the terms of its separation and the form of the future relationship are entirely unresolved. This continuing uncertainty is a huge cost in its own ...

Emerging-market stresses have been building since at least 2013. Investors may have forgotten the effect of the ‘taper tantrum’ on the so-called Fragile Five – Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa – a term coined by Morgan Stanley to describe their vulnerability to capital outflows. Monetary accommodation, lower current-account deficits and growth disguised the underlying challenges, attracting more capital ...