Opinion

Is any airline on the planet in a more impossible situation right now than Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd.? The carriers that have coped best during the pandemic have two qualities in common. They either have a substantial domestic or quasi-domestic market, such as Interglobe Aviation, Spring Airlines or Ryanair Holdings; a reliable government shareholder, like Singapore Airlines; or, ideally, both, ...

  The 10-year German bund yield has turned positive after almost three years below zero. It’s a sign of the times as government borrowing costs are on the rise globally. With the euro zone’s nascent economic recovery more fragile than that of the US, however, the European Central Bank needs to remain vigilant that increased market interest rates don’t choke ...

When he took office one year ago, President Joe Biden faced extraordinary challenges. He had to contend with a global pandemic that had crushed the economy and confounded the experts. He had to repair shattered alliances and restore American credibility after four years of President Donald Trump. More pointedly, he was taking charge of a country left bitterly divided — ...

  What should be an ordinary commercial dispute between Amazon.com Inc and the founders of a near-bankrupt retailer is shining a harsh light on the quality of legal and regulatory protection investors actually receive in India. The long drawn-out saga has thrown up two questions for prospective investors, or those who already have business interests in India. First, what does ...

Some things just don’t last long. On January 19, consumer goods giant Unilever Plc walked away from a deal that came to light just over the weekend. It declined to increase its 50 billion-pound ($68.2 billion) proposal to buy GlaxoSmithKline’s Plc’s consumer health arm. Citing financial discipline is an elegant way for Chief Executive Officer Alan Jope to extract himself ...

  Back in March, an investment fund called Archegos Capital Management collapsed after building up vast derivatives bets on several stocks, precipitating billions of dollars in losses for its lenders. The incident raised a troubling question about the country’s financial early-warning system: How could regulators have remained unaware of such a large concentration of risk until it was too late? ...

The walls are closing in on Boris Johnson. The UK prime minister’s defiant posture in the House of Commons rallied loyalists but failed to placate new and old enemies within his party, who are calling on him to quit over lockdown-defying gatherings held at 10 Downing Street during the pandemic. Conservative members of Parliament can trigger a leadership contest with ...

  Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc are starting to churn out doses of omicron-specific vaccines, and they say they could have data on whether the shots are effective as soon as March. But is this the best way to build and maintain protection against Covid-19? The world is breeding new variants so fast, it may not make sense to chase ...

On Christmas eve, Gazprom, the Russian state-owned natural gas giant, tweeted a rather unfestive message: Gas inventories in Europe were depleting quickly. Since then, Gazprom has been reminding the world of the trend every few days. “It should be noted that gas reserves in Europe’s UGS (underground gas storages) are currently at their lowest for the season in the long ...

  Britain’s decision to leave the European Union has imperiled London’s status as the region’s financial center. So far, the loss of jobs has been more of a dribble than an exodus. But the current hiatus masks a longer-term threat, as companies choosing where to house new positions expand elsewhere. At the moment, British banking is thriving. UK financial-services firms ...