Opinion

  A decision to arrest a top executive of the Samsung Group on suspicion of bribery and embezzlement would no doubt cheer the millions of South Koreans fed up with collusion and cronyism among the country’s elite. The way to prevent future scandals, however, is to transform the huge companies like Samsung that dominate the country’s economy. A court will ...

  British Prime Minister Theresa May made UK stance about Brexit clear in her 40-minute speech. It has been heralded as a forwarding looking by some, and condemned by many others. She said that Britain would leave the EU single market of some 500 million people, but seek the greatest possible access to it through a new, comprehensive, bold and ...

  In the first week of 2017, the offshore yuan surged by a record amount against the U.S. dollar over two days, interbank borrowing costs soared and volatility intensified. The following week, pretty much everything reversed. It’s a familiar pattern that exemplifies the contradictions bedeviling China’s currency. Policy makers have expended much effort trying to internationalize the yuan, notably by ...

  For Morgan Stanley’s wannabe shareholders, this may be your time to pounce. The New York bank’s shares fell as much as 3.3 percent on Tuesday, despite a string of good news: Earnings per share blew past analysts’ estimates as Morgan Stanley posted its highest fourth-quarter profit since 2006 and record annual revenue. Those feats were made possible by a ...

  Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) needs urgent treatment. Cuts to the social services budget mean hospital wards are clogged with people who could probably be cared for at lower cost elsewhere, especially the elderly in need of social care rather than medical treatment. Staff are stretched to the limits. The situation is already critical and the government’s published plans ...

  In February 2015, economists at HSBC Holdings in London coined the terms “hard” and “soft” Brexit. The latter would maintain “much of the status quo” if the UK voted to quit the European Union; the former entailed “huge risk and would be operationally complicated.” Even just after the Brexit vote, you could be forgiven for seeing the hard option ...

  How do you celebrate the fifth anniversary of a colossal mistake? For India’s tax department, the answer has to be: Make a new one that’s a thousand times worse, then sit back and enjoy the fun. There can be no other explanation for the “clarifications” the authorities issued before Christmas, instructing fund managers to withhold and pay taxes when ...

  Even by his standards, President-elect Donald Trump’s statements on trade have been stunning in their recklessness. His proposals essentially amount to the repudiation of a system that has fostered global stability and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the last several decades — and if he actually intends to execute his radical agenda, there’s little ...

  This is one of the mysteries that has already put the ability of technology to test and will continue to frustrate the world in future. The search of missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 has been abandoned after almost three years. The plane vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Crews completed their deep-sea ...

  Wells Fargo is planning to launch new compensation packages for its employees that aim to reward customer satisfaction. And 25,000 entry-level workers, including tellers and customer-service reps, received raises that bring minimum pay from $12 to $13.50 per hour. These are positive steps towards digging out from a badly mismanaged scandal. In September, the bank was fined $185 million ...