Opinion

  Beji Sasaki, a maverick businessman who first challenged Tokyo’s status quo four decades ago, says his bidding war with the $13 billion computer giant Fujitsu Ltd. is just the start of his plan to use takeovers to change Japan Inc. Sasaki, a 61-year-old entrepreneur, fashion designer and supermarathon runner, says he’s setting up a fund backed by Taiwanese money ...

  We are defining prosperity down — or, more accurately, prosperity is defining itself down. We are eight years into the recovery from the Great Recession, the unemployment rate has dropped to 4.4 percent, the stock market is pushing record highs, and consumer confidence seems robust. And yet, the economy doesn’t feel as good as it looks. Anxieties lurk. There ...

  When Tesco Plc was in crisis, many investors wanted Archie Norman to become its chairman. Instead, he’s ended up at another storied but struggling British household name: Marks and Spencer Plc. M&S isn’t in as much of a pickle as Tesco was, but it is striving to revive its clothing business while the consumer environment is about to get ...

  The dereliction of duty is breathtaking. In pushing the American Health Care Act through the House of Representatives, Speaker Paul Ryan and his Republican conference have voted to remake almost one-fifth of the US economy. They did so without public hearings, without input from outside experts, without analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and without, finally, much compunction or ...

  British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party scored a landslide victory in local government elections. It’s a prelude to a massive victory for May in the UK’s June 8 poll. The Tories won 1,882 of the 4,851 council seats contested in England, Scotland and Wales. It is a net gain of 556, which brought under control 11 counties and ...

    The global economy is picking up steam, but that’s deceptive. The foundations of expansion are soft, marked by weak productivity growth and inequality. The two are related. The productivity problem confronting the world’s advanced economies predates the financial crisis more than a decade ago. When we look beyond the headline statistics, patterns emerge. Advanced economies have become less ...

  Warren Buffett’s war chest is ready for his next deal — maybe even his biggest one yet. The company’s cash swelled to $86.4 billion at the end of 2016, and at this rate it means even takeovers in the $100 billion ballpark are conceivable, as my colleague Noah Buhayar wrote for Bloomberg News this week. He flagged Costco Wholesale ...

  Malls are fighting for shoppers with one thing their web rivals can’t offer: parking lots. With customer traffic sagging, US retail landlords are using their sprawling concrete lots to host events such as carnivals, concerts and food-truck festivals. They’re aiming to lure visitors with experiences that can’t be replicated online — and then get them inside the properties to ...

  Into the deadly morass of the Syrian war, Russian President Vladimir Putin has dropped a new peace proposal that calls for establishing safe zones in several parts of the country, grounding the Syria air force and possibly creating buffer zones between combatants to be monitored by international peacekeeping troops. Putin outlined his plan in a telephone call on Tuesday ...

  Being a Chinese airline can seem pretty sweet. The country’s major carriers have what’s soon to be the world’s biggest aviation market to themselves. Operating costs are often on a par with budget carriers elsewhere. Thanks to their lack of fuel hedges, Chinese airlines have even pocketed an outsized benefit from the slump in oil prices. Sooner or later ...