Opinion

Europe’s banks are eager to show that the money they’ve splurged on bolstering their compliance departments is paying off: HSBC Holdings Plc’s reporting of a suspicious transaction helped Angola recover $500 million linked to an alleged fraud involving the son of a former president. The bigger picture is less encouraging. Despite a cascade of rules, regulations and record-breaking fines, that ...

In recent weeks, investors witnessed a rare concurrence of market developments. Widespread concern about escalating trade conflicts caused equities to plunge and US Treasury yields to decline. So far, the reaction has been a textbook case of investor behaviour. Yet, for all the turmoil, the dollar did not prove to be a safe harbour, and has remained weak against major ...

In an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Chairman Jack Ma made the case against escalating trade tensions between the world’s two most powerful economies. “Both Sides Would Lose a US-China Trade War,” was the headline. It’s the same argument I made a month ago, and I wasn’t the first because, frankly, it’s kind of ...

As lawmakers grill Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it’s clear many are wrestling with whether and how the government should regulate tech companies. A recurring question is whether they have any inherent ideological biases. In his testimony to the Senate, Zuckerberg called Silicon Valley “an extremely left-leaning place.” While voter patterns at the regional level and likely the employee level at ...

A word of advice for Congress as it ponders new schemes for internet regulation after the ‘perp walk’ this week of Facebook tycoon Mark Zuckerberg: Don’t do it. Zuckerberg is a very tempting target. His serial apologies show how Facebook became so entangled in its corporate mission to ‘bring the world closer together’ that it stopped putting the customer first. ...

One under-appreciated factor behind Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s success as Indian prime minister has been the tailwind he’s received from low oil prices. Brent crude averaged $99.43 a barrel during his predecessor Manmohan Singh’s second term in office, putting pressure on an economy that’s heavily dependent on imports. It began its precipitous decline from those levels just weeks after ...

It’s time to face facts. Interest-rate arbitrage no longer works — the Hong Kong dollar is being driven more by money flows from China. The city’s currency fell to HK$7.85 per dollar last week — the weak end of its permitted band for the first time since the range was imposed in 2005. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said it ...

When you consider what we know so far about the tariffs the Trump administration has recently considered imposing on Chinese goods, you might be tempted to think the retail industry shouldn’t be in panic mode. Yes, items such as televisions and dishwashers are on the list of products the US plans to tax. But, so far at least, key products ...

George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan continues to grab the occasional headline with his thesis that formal education is mostly wasted time and money. Caplan’s book, “The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money,” has been highly controversial. I have taken issue with his premise that people pay for college in order to ...

Axis Bank Ltd’s board mustn’t feel even the slightest embarrassment for being so wrong for so long. In fact, it deserves a vote of thanks for helping to create possibly the biggest and juiciest takeover target in the history of Indian banking. Rewind to last July. The Indian lender’s board had just rewarded CEO Shikha Sharma with a fourth term—until ...