Opinion

Lee Shau Kee, the billionaire chairman of Henderson Land Development Co., has said he will donate HK$1 billion ($128 million) to charity each year that the Hang Seng Index stays above 30,000, and double that if it reaches 40,000. The 89-year-old should be prepared to hand out the cash. Sure, Hong Kong’s benchmark gauge closed above 30,000 on only one ...

Should central banks embrace cryptocurrencies, or even pioneer their own? In a nutshell, no. Crypto assets are an unusual innovation, still in flux and often poorly understood. Trying to centralize them in a bureaucracy is exactly the wrong way to go. Yet China’s central bank claims it is working towards a blockchain-based digital currency. Singapore has already experimented in this ...

President Donald Trump has made clear his intention of “bringing back coal.” He has rolled back environmental regulations and moved to repeal the previous administration’s curbs on carbon emissions from power plants. Last week, adhering to a British-Canadian initiative presented at the 2017 United Nations climate change talks in Bonn, about 20 nations and regions (expected to grow to 50 ...

Europe’s male, pale and stale boardrooms face the same fate as the most polluting companies — evolve or die. In recent years, the fund management industry has started to take its environmental, social and governance responsibilities more seriously, mostly by shunning investments deemed damaging to the planet. But there’s another thread to ESG that’s poised to reshape investment behavior and ...

Fast Retailing Co. should consider applying the brakes. The owner of the Japanese chain Uniqlo is planning to open stores in India as part of a greater push internationally amid a shrinking population and sluggish wages at home. Building stores in Asia’s third-largest economy makes sense, so long as it’s done right. Fast Retailing expects Uniqlo’s international takings to surpass ...

Tuition fees have become one of the hot-button issues of British politics again and Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond is expected to confirm the Tory pledge to freeze tuition fees when he issues his budget today. The Labour Party wants to abolish them entirely, endearing itself to younger voters. But so far neither Conservative nor Labour approaches get at ...

During its first six months of existence, Bluegogo, China’s third-largest bike-sharing firm, dumped 600,000 bicycles into Chinese cities. Twenty million people signed up to use them; investors showered the company with $58 million in funds. But with rental rates as low as $0.07 per half-hour, Bluegogo’s days were numbered and last week the company folded. In an apologetic letter, its ...

Now that we’ve all eaten plenty of turkey and fallen asleep on the couch watching football, it’s time for yet another Thanksgiving weekend tradition: declaring Black Friday dead. This has been a common theme in analysis and media reports about retail’s annual deal extravaganza for years now. As online shopping grows, there’s less incentive to wait outside in the cold ...

Eliminating net neutrality is, in the best and worst case scenarios, either necessary to keep the internet up and running, or will lead to a dystopian future where a few major corporations control our thoughts. The more prosaic reality, however, is that a world without net neutrality will work just fine. I am therefore not incensed (or very excited) about ...

In the run-up to the UK’s 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union, and immediately after it, the ‘remain’ campaign was much derided for fear-mongering. People are sick and tired of experts warning about doomsday scenarios, said Conservative politician and lead-Brexiter Michael Gove. Those warning that Brexit would cost the economy were dubbed “remoaners”; Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond ...