Opinion

  The Ulf-man cometh. And it’s all rather underwhelming. Ulf Mark Schneider, the new chief executive of Nestle SA, has laid out what is ultimately a more sensible course for the world’s largest food company. As expected, he’s ditched the strict adherence to an organic sales-growth target of 5 to 6 percent. This year, it’ll be more like 2 to ...

  When UK voters decided last June to leave the European Union, global investors anticipating the opposite result wiped out billions of pounds in the currency market. Sterling plummeted a record 8.05 percent to a 31-year low. It’s been seven months since those British voters narrowly rejected the view of prime ministers, presidents, finance ministers, business leaders and economists that ...

  Economists are increasingly turning their attention to the problem of monopoly. This doesn’t mean literal monopoly, like when one utility company provides all the power in a city. It refers to market concentration in general — when an industry goes from having 20 players to having only 10, or when the four biggest companies in an industry start taking ...

  Part of Warren Buffett’s mystique is his fondness for a good value. He still lives in an Omaha house he bought in the 1950s. Buffett’s license plate at one point read “Thrifty.” When it comes to Apple Inc., however, Buffett’s firm isn’t exactly plucking from the bargain bin. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. first disclosed a $1 billion stake in Apple ...

  Is Europe heading back to financial mayhem? Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras warned this week that it might be. Any further delay in reaching agreement between Greece and its creditors, he said, risked a new recession and a fresh crisis of confidence across the euro zone. Maybe that’s a little alarmist — but he’s right about one thing. ...

  US President Donald Trump on Wednesday did about-face on Palestine-Israel conflict. He abandoned the US policy on ‘two-state’ solution for Middle East peace. Trump, during a joint White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, held back from clearly supporting an independent Palestinian state. Trump said he would be open to a Mideast peace agreement that doesn’t ...

  Why does everything cost so darn much? More to the point, why does it cost so much more than it used to? Well, not everything costs more than it used to. Food is cheap. Electronics are absurdly cheap: I can get a clock radio on Amazon today for not much more than I would have paid in 1965 (before ...

  Elon Musk wants to dig tunnels. Without them, he says, “we will all be in traffic hell forever.” It’s a well-timed ambition, given President Trump’s plan to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure projects. Let’s hope he can figure out what he’s doing. Musk has already started burrowing near the offices of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. in Los Angeles — ...

  Chinese companies looking to escape slower economic growth at home have turned, quite naturally, to soccer and Hollywood. They should prepare for some unhappy endings. Recon Group, the Chinese firm that bought the UK’s Aston Villa Football Club, is the latest to attempt to add movie making to its bow, in talks to acquire Millennium Films, according to people ...

  Michael Flynn’s real problem isn’t the Logan Act, an obscure and probably unenforceable 1799 statute that bars private meddling in foreign policy disputes. It’s whether President Trump’s national security adviser sought to hide from his colleagues and the nation a pre-inauguration discussion with the Russian government about sanctions that the Obama administration was imposing. “It’s far less significant if ...