Opinion

As the Brexit shambles rolls on, I’ve been puzzled by the hostility of Brexiteers to the proposal that Theresa May is trying to sell at home and to the European Union. A weird domestic alliance of hardline Leavers and zealous Remainers could block May’s plans, regardless of how the EU responds — and the result might well be a no-deal ...

The S&P 500 Index rallied, coming within 0.3 percent of its intraday record set in January. If a new high is rea-ched in coming days, it wou-ld cap an incredible come- back from the sell-off in late January and early February that drove the benchmark into a correction. It would also renew criticism that investors are too complacent. If only ...

Health-care sector stalwarts may be right in thinking that the joint venture between Amazon.com Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. poses no near-term existential threat. It will likely be years before the initiative develops the potential to have a meaningful impact on the industry’s behemoths, particularly insurers. But things are happening elsewhere in the meantime. Employers ...

For Samsung Electronics Co, the answer was 180 trillion won ($161 billion). For Apple Inc. it was $350 billion. The question was: How much are you going to contribute to your home economy? But for the smartphone giants’ finance teams, it might just as well have been – what’s the biggest number you can rustle up to impress politicians? Samsung ...

The manner in which Elon Musk disclosed that he was “considering taking Tesla private” shows why this would be the best possible outcome for all involved. The stock jumped 4 percent on Musk’s tweet, on top of an existing rally that had taken hold 30 minutes earlier on a Financial Times report that Saudi Arabia had bought stock in the ...

It’s time for FAANG stocks to break up, at least in investors’ minds. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet can’t get away from one another. Every time one grabs the spotlight — as Apple did last week when it became the first US company with a $1 trillion market value — it brings along the other four. They’re ...

Snapchat has defined itself in opposition to the internet establishment. It didn’t want to be a digital hangout like Facebook that lured the masses to perform for strangers. Snapchat’s advertisements wouldn’t be “creepy” like other internet ads. Web-video programs from partners such as ESPN wouldn’t be the schlock people saw elsewhere. Now, though, Snapchat is borrowing liberally from the internet ...

Let’s travel back in time to 1995. Most Americans still remembered the calamitous inflation of the late 1970s (prices rose 13 percent in 1979). Many federal benefits, including Social Security, were (and are) tied to inflation. But was the inflation overstated, as many economists thought? If so, the economy might be doing better than repor-ted. To answer that question, the ...

Corporate executives and their accountants have long contended that the use of adjusted earnings, which ignore costs like acquisition expenses, interest payments or just about anything they find inconvenient, gives investors a better picture of companies’ performance. Under no circumstances is it manipulation, they say. But a new study suggests it just might be. The study, which will be presented ...

Masayoshi Son is a man of grand ambitions. But his dream of raising $30 billion in an initial public offering of his Japanese mobile-phone company may be a stretch. SoftBank Group Corp is seeking a valuation of about $90 billion for its domestic wireless business and is speaking to advisers about selling a third of the unit, Giles Turner, Ruth ...