Opinion

One frequent criticism of conglomerates is that their complex structures can make it more difficult to get proper credit from investors for all of their good assets and growth opportunities. But the axiom can also work in the reverse, apparently. 3M Co has so many problems at the moment — a potentially mammoth liability tied to legacy manufacturing of per- ...

  Container-shipping companies have found lots of ways to spend their enormous pandemic profits. They’re lifting staff pay, making acquisitions and returning heaps of cash to shareholders. One person who won’t benefit much is you, the taxpayer. Based on their recent financial filings, I calculate big European container lines AP Moller-Maersk A/S, CMA CGM SA and Hapag-Lloyd AG owe just ...

  Out of all the actions the Biden Administration could have taken on Afghanistan, commandeering the nation’s foreign currency reserves is, to put it mildly, unhelpful. In an executive order, President Joe Biden began the process of releasing the $7 billion in Afghan Central Bank funds held in the Federal Reserve. It froze those assets last August when the Taliban ...

  Aluminum is the jack-of-all-trades of the metal industry: it’s everywhere, underpinning modern life, from an iPhone to a jetliner to a can of beer. For a long time, however, it was difficult to get excited about it. The metal is just dirt: bauxite, one of the most abundant elements on the Earth’s crust. And the bulls couldn’t count on ...

Life Insurance Corp of India was seeded by the government in New Delhi, but nourishing the sapling to a colossus with 39.6 trillion rupees ($525 billion) in assets under management — and more lives assured than Pakistan’s population — has fallen on generations of loyal customers. Which is why LIC’s upcoming initial public offering, India’s biggest ever share sale, raises ...

  Online brokers like Robinhood Markets Inc and crypto assets might get the headlines, but the Securities and Exchange Commission’s parallel effort to drag private-equity firms and hedge funds out of the shadows will have far more impact on far more lives. Private equity especially has exploded in power and reach in the past decade. That’s why SEC Chair Gary ...

  When, not if, has been the growing consensus on Boris Johnson’s departure as prime minister. He’s unpopular, untrusted and no longer seen as an authority — a man in office but only barely in power. His former aide and now arch-enemy Dominic Cummings has hinted that there are more damaging party pictures and other kompromat to emerge. And the ...

In April and May of 2020, when global air travel had essentially ground to a halt and it was becoming apparent that the pandemic would last more than a few weeks, one popular narrative was that the slump would prompt airlines and lessors to put more jets than usual out to pasture permanently. The concern was that this would then ...

It’s not just your fluffy winter pajamas being affected by global supply chain snarl-ups. Your summer shorts could be too. Under Armour Inc, the sportswear maker, warned that the impact of bottlenecks could continue into its spring and summer seasons. Higher shipping costs could last for much of this year too. The current effects are a continuation of the supply-chain ...

  Browsing the internet has never really been free. Each time you visit a website, a silent auction for your eyeballs is conducted to show you an ad that effectively makes you pay with your personal information. Location, birthday, browsing data and more are broadcast to hundreds of vendors within a millisecond. The practice has flourished even in Europe, which ...