Opinion

  How to command a premium for mediocrity? If that question is posed to Postal Savings Bank of China Co., which counts almost half the people in the world’s most-populous nation as its customers, the answer may well be ‘superior tax planning.’ The Hong Kong-listed Chinese lender enjoys an 8 percent to 26 percent valuation premium over the four largest ...

  Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford found something constructive to tell senators on an appropriations subcommittee this week, even if it had nothing to do with the Pentagon budget. The two men challenged lawmakers to finally provide a legal basis for the U.S. war against terrorist groups. It’s something that President Barack ...

  Iraqi and coalition forces launched the operation to liberate western Mosul, the most populated urban areas, from IS extremists on February 19. Since then the Iraqi forces have wrested back a series of neighbourhoods. Troops have also retaken the city’s airport, a sprawling military complex, the main government compound. The offensive is being waged from three directions advancing along ...

  The Socialist candidate for the French presidency, Benoit Hamon, says he doesn’t believe in the ‘myth’ and “quasi-religion” of growth– it’s part of the “consumerist, productivist and materialist model” of development, he argues. That’s outside the economic mainstream, and many see those views as a symptom of the meltdown of the global left. But the just-released Global Happiness Report ...

  The global smartphone market has seen better days, yet the industry underpins the hottest stocks in Asia’s best-performing sector this year. The MSCI Asia Pacific Infotech index is up almost 16 percent in 2017, outgunning the runner up (industrials) by just shy of 7 percentage points. And leading that sub-index, in dollar terms, are smartphone suppliers. What’s interesting is ...

  Markets are never perfect in their predictive abilities but they tend to be forward-looking in how they trade to anticipate what will happen next. Take last week’s interest-rate increase by the Federal Reserve, its third since December 2015, and the bond market. Bond yields have been rising for some time. In what some investors are calling a generational bottom ...

  Immigration is the topic of the day. The political right, after once embracing a laissez-faire policy toward immigration — President Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty for undocumented immigrants and President George W Bush tried unsuccessfully to do the same — appears to want to choke off the inflow of newcomers. Even legal immigration is being targeted for reduction. This ...

  The UK government will soon invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to begin divorce proceedings from the European Union. The Scottish government is seeking to hold a second independence referendum before Brexit talks wind up. An otherwise uneventful Bank of England meeting had one interest-rate dissenter with others potentially sympathetic as inflation stirs. But if you look at ...

  When Donald Trump announced that he would nominate Wall Street lawyer Jay Clayton to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, he cited the need to “undo many regulations which have stifled investment in American business.” At Clayton’s confirmation hearing this week, senators should ask exactly what that means. Scrutiny of Clayton has so far focused on his close ties ...

  Having made rookie mistakes, Trump must be thinking to change his tack on policies. Just two months old, Trump presidency is in disarray. Trump’s first policy setback came after his executive order banning travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries was blocked by US courts. Even the revamped travel ban failed to convince US judges that it was not a Muslim ...