Hennes & Mauritz AB is a model retailer, but its pile of unsold clothes has been obscuring that fact. Last week, there were the first signs of that changing. The company reported first quarter pre-tax profit that significantly beat the consensus of analysts’ expectations. Sales rose 10 percent in local currencies in the three months to February 28, and were ...

Ask for a concrete example of the euro zone’s march towards further integration, and you will soon hear the words banking union. At the height of the sovereign debt crisis, European leaders agreed to move supervision of the region’s most important lenders to the European Central Bank (ECB), create a single rulebook, and start centralised funds to deal with future ...

Sometimes being good enough just isn’t enough. That’s the situation Deutsche Bank AG’s Asian employees may find themselves in if a merger with Commerzbank AG goes ahead. Deutsche Bank has relatively resilient investment- and corporate-banking franchises in the region, where Commerzbank has only a tiny presence. But the optics are awkward: It’s a unit stuffed with highly paid bankers at ...