Opinion

No one has learned any lessons. That’s the discouraging takeaway from a Wall Street Journal article about the nearly unchecked power held by founders of many young technology companies. The people bankrolling those companies are responsible for providing oversight, too, but don’t seem to be doing much of it. The Journal reported that two-thirds of US startups with venture-capital investors ...

China’s electric-car battery champion has had its wings clipped, or so it seems. Investors should breathe a sigh of relief. Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., which has been gearing up for an initial public offering for the past year, is now expected to raise a net 5.46 billion yuan ($853 million), less than half its target as of March. The reduction ...

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation has been in effect for less than a week. It was always clear that a vast number of companies would comply in only the most perfunctory way, at least while the law was being tested. But the big tech companies, sure to face scrutiny, were expected to show a little more rigor. Instead, ...

“Are you on the road or in the ditch?” That’s the question labor reporters used to ask about big contract negotiations back when I covered the United Steelworkers union 40 years ago in Pittsburgh — and it’s the right one to pose now as President Trump zigs and zags toward a summit meeting with Kim Jong Un. Trump and Kim ...

With Brexit looming, profit warnings have become the new black for the British High Street. In the first quarter, a fifth of the country’s biggest publicly traded retailers warned earnings would fall, according to accounting firm EY. Worries about the economy are present, obviously, but heavy selling from investors — Dixons Carphone Plc’s stock fell 20 percent on Tuesday after ...

Hargreaves Lansdown Plc is on a roll. The UK’s biggest direct-to-consumer fund platform saw the assets it manages grow by 3 percent to $120 billion in the four months through April as it added 60,000 new clients. The firm’s market value is near a record 9 billion pounds. That picture of health, though, may prove a red rag to the ...

The crisis in Italy is also a crisis for the European Union. The populist parties that won the last Italian election, and that hope to do even better next time, are united in little except blaming the EU for Italy’s setbacks. They’re wrong about this, and now Europe must be careful not to play into their hands. The immediate political ...

The European Commission has settled a seven-year antitrust dispute with Gazprom, which was required to make concessions but avoided a fine. Although the Russian natural gas monopoly’s detractors in Eastern Europe are likely to say Europe caved, the settlement shows that the company has been defanged and is no longer a threat to Europe’s energy security. Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s ...

Everybody wants autonomous vehicles now: It’s the auto industry’s way forward and Silicon Valley’s latest preoccupation. China is no different. Alibaba Group Holding is testing self-driving cars in China, and Baidu Inc. started trials of autonomous technology last year. BMW earlier this month was the first foreign carmaker to get a license to test its offering in China. In mid-May, ...

Elon Musk’s recent Twitter-lashing of the media has prompted comparisons to President Donald Trump’s “fake news” obsession. For me, though, its sheer variety — encompassing Soviet propaganda, a new Model Y launch date, the Theranos scandal, the lameness of car emoji, and much more — instead brought Steve Bannon to mind, particularly his media strategy: “flood the zone with shit.” ...