Opinion

UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson reportedly once said that he enjoyed trying to change the course of history, even if that meant “throwing rocks into glass houses and listening to the shattering of glass.” So it’s no wonder he thinks that US President Donald Trump would be a great Brexit leader. “Imagine Trump doing Brexit,” Britain’s chief diplomat told a ...

Italy’s new Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is eager to talk to the European Commission about running a higher deficit, he told his country’s parliament this week. He’s about to find out that the rest of the EU isn’t ready to listen. Brussels is ready to take the same hard-line approach with Rome’s populist rulers as it has with Britain’s Brexit ...

For years now, it’s been a common view in the retail world that a win for Amazon.com Inc. is a loss for some old-school retailers. But these days, that’s not necessarily the case. Traditional brick-and mortar chains are starting to strike some innovative partnerships with their arch-competitor, turning to unconventional arrangements in the hopes of getting more shoppers back into ...

Erich Sixt, chairman and chief executive officer of the Pullach, Germany-based global car rental company that bears his family’s name, recently described electric cars as a “costly political error” given their still inferior range, long charging times and the huge investment necessary to expand the charging infrastructure. It may have been a self-serving statement, but he may also well be ...

The relationship between the value of the yuan and the US dollar has broken down in the first few months of 2018, raising questions over the actions and objectives of China’s central bank. Since unveiling a basket of reference currencies used to set the yuan’s exchange rate in 2015, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has largely left it alone. ...

Talk of the demise of the world’s largest industrial-machinery maker is probably overdone. Fanuc Corp., the low-key Japanese automation giant whose machines pepper factory floors across the globe, has fallen from investors’ grace: The stock is down more than 30 percent from its January high, while the Topix index has lost less than 6 percent. Much of the gloom stems ...

It’s said that banks stopped inventing anything useful after the ATM. Yet bailed-out lender Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) has given us not just one valuable payments processor, but two. Its Worldpay business was sold to private equity and changed hands again last year for $10 billion. Now Amsterdam-based Adyen BV — whose founders worked for Worldpay — ...

The researchers who pioneered insulin injections for diabetes sufferers in 1922 were dedicated to making the life-saving treatment widely available, and gave away their rights to profit from the discovery. Yet almost a century later, the medicine is still beyond the reach of roughly half of the 100 million people around the world who need it. Governments should be asking ...

On 6 June 1944, American soldiers stormed the beaches of France, beginning a campaign that would roll back Nazi Germany’s control of Western Europe. It was an unprecedented display of military might and organizational prowess for the US. The man who led that heroic effort was himself of German descent—general and future president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower’s family, which changed ...

While Hong Kong’s stock and bond investment pipes to mainland China get much attention, a third link between the financial center and the People’s Republic has largely flown under the radar. The hidden “connect” hooks up banking flows from the city with borrowers up north; it’s large, and growing fast. Left unchecked, it could weaken Hong Kong’s lenders. Fitch Ratings ...