China’s bond market has been eerily quiet lately. Over the past year, investors in China’s US dollar bonds had gotten used to the idea of defaults. As early as 2015, the government started allowing some state-owned enterprises to renege on their commitments, a painful but welcome step that helps differentiate healthy firms and troubled ones. But there hadn’t been a ...

Slimming down appears to be paying off for Novartis AG. CEO Vas Narasimhan has refocussed the Swiss pharma giant around drugs by selling off eye-care business Alcon and its remaining consumer-health inte- rests. Second-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street expectations and a big guidance boost showed the benefits of the strategy. Shares hit an all-time high in early trading even ...

What’s wrong with a 50 basis-point interest-rate cut? I’m all for central banks doing their utmost to support high, durable and inclusive growth. But this doesn’t mean throwing everything at the wall when the economy is doing relatively well, financial markets are buoyant, and policy ammunition is limited. Growing pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates by 50 ...