Opinion

India’s banks were hoping the regulator would feel the pain of their bond-market losses and maybe offer a palliative. What they got instead from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was tough love. Condemnation by deputy governor Viral Acharya may be correct, but it won’t resolve the mess. In a speech in Mumbai on Monday, Acharya revisited the nexus between ...

TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough made his viewers weep last month with an exposé on how plastics are polluting the oceans, harming marine animals and fish. Last week, British prime minister Theresa May announced a slew of new measures to discourage plastics use, including plastic-free supermarket aisles and an expanded levy on plastic bags. A ban on microbeads in cosmetics ...

What’s not to like about Singapore’s property market? Sales in 2017 touched a four-year high. Developers paid homeowners S$8.5 billion ($6.4 billion) — the most since 2007 — to vacate their homes so new apartment complexes could be built. Prices have stopped falling, and Credit Suisse Group AG expects them to rise between 5 percent and 10 percent this year. ...

After a 14-day run, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index on Monday came close to breaking through its historical record set more than a decade ago. Technical analysts now caution the benchmark looks overbought. Its strength, however, shouldn’t be surprising. That’s because the Hang Seng today isn’t what it was a decade ago. One of the most conspicuous changes has been ...

Last week, the UK government asked German business leaders for help in securing a good deal with the European Union on financial services. The request deserves to be taken seriously. Europe’s businesses have much to gain from keeping London as a thriving financial center. The City is by far the most significant financial hub in Europe. In 2016, the UK ...

If Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is sincere in a recent post about gradually taking the media element out of “social media,” he’s striking a powerful blow for tech self-regulation, as well as preparing to pay a heavy price for the evolution of his vision. But getting the genie back into the bottle may be too difficult even for ...

Current debates about stock valuations resemble the arcane meditations of medieval monks. But the real drivers are more mundane. Traders, weaned on tales of financial derring-do like ‘The Big Short,’ want to be the ones who profit from the next crash. The problem is that it may be easier to predict the crash than to profit from it. To make ...

For decades, the donation bin has offered consumers in rich countries a guilt-free way to unload their old clothing. In a virtuous and profitable cycle, a global network of traders would collect these garments, grade them, and transport them around the world to be recycled, worn again, or turned into rags and stuffing. Now that cycle is breaking down. Fashion ...

US President Donald Trump has been relatively subdued over the last few months when it comes to trade, a period that roughly overlaps with the time it took to pass tax reform. He was under pressure to keep quiet about it during the tax negotiations, but 2018 is likely to bring a very different Trump. This “economic nationalism” stuff is ...

The world’s three largest credit-ratings companies have a bit of catching up to do. Eight high-yield developers listed in Hong Kong should now be investment grade, according to Bloomberg’s default risk model, which uses market inputs such as debt outstanding, interest expenses and operating cash flow to calculate the probability of firms reneging on their obligations in the year ahead. ...