Opinion

Jack Ma says he’s ready for China to make semiconductors at home. It’s a longstanding goal for the Chinese government. And thanks to a recent crackdown on certain technology exports by the US, it’s now a critical one. The question is whether China can finally conquer this challenge after decades of failures. Semiconductors are the building blocks of electronics, found ...

Who wears it best in online luxury? Investors are about to decide. Just as Cie Financiere Richemont is taking control of Yoox Net-A-Porter Group, rival Farfetch U.K. Ltd may be eyeing a $6 billion initial public offering. Though YNAP is a digital pioneer, it apes a traditional department store. It buys stock and holds it until it is sold to ...

What’s the difference between Boeing Co. and Airbus SE? One builds commercial aircraft, the other makes “gliders” (a pejorative term for passenger jets without engines.) Airbus shipped just 121 aircraft during the first quarter, the least since 2011, notes Bloomberg News’s Benjamin Katz this morning. That’s also one third fewer than Boeing managed in the same period. The main problem ...

Walmart Inc. is starting to make moves that reveal its international ambitions. The retailing giant has agreed to sell its UK grocery chain, Asda, to rival J Sainsbury PLC in a transaction worth about $10.1 billion. Walmart will retain a 42 percent stake in the combined company. That splashy deal comes amid signs Walmart is considering other big changes to ...

There may be other major global metropolises (Los Angeles springs to mind) that have invested more effort and money than Mexico City to bring in water from afar. But there is surely none that has invested as much effort and money to send the water back out. Mexico City’s hydrological paradox is that (unlike Los Angeles) it gets more than ...

It is awesome to be Jeff Bezos. The Amazon.com Inc. CEO is the world’s richest person. He has a meme-worthy physique. And investors love him when he shows them the tiniest bit of profit love. Amazon recently reported a dinky 3.8 percent operating profit margin on more than $51 billion in sales. It was the highest operating profit margin since ...

The state of the auto industry in 2018 reads like a series of paradoxes. In order to sell cars now so they can invest in the next-generation electric and environmentally friendly vehicles, auto producers are moving away from the production of smaller, more environmentally friendly sedans. And at a time when oil prices and interest rates are rising, creating affordability ...

The joke doing the rounds at last week’s spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington was that central banks are looking into cryptocurrencies so that their governors have something to say when they go to conferences and are asked about Bitcoin. Okay, it’s not that funny. But it says something about how nervous ...

How much is your privacy on Facebook worth? This question has seen renewed attention following the revelation that political analysis firm Cambridge Analytica, hired by the Trump election campaign, gained access to the private information of more than 50 million users. One of the possible responses that’s generated some discussion is the creation of a paid tier that’s free of ...

For a company that no longer makes mobile phones, it’s odd that Nokia Oyj is making almost all of its money from them. The world’s biggest mobile phone maker before the iPhone came along in 2007, the Finnish company’s main business is now communications networks – in theory. That business was responsible for some 88 percent of revenue in the ...