Bloomberg Preliminary figures compiled by Venezuela’s central bank indicate that the crisis-wracked nation’s economy contracted 16.6 percent in 2017, according to two people with direct knowledge of the estimates. For the first time since 2016, the bank is preparing a raft of macroeconomic indicators for International Monetary Fund (IMF) to avoid sanctions including a possible expulsion from lender. Bank technicians ...

After more than five years in power, Xi Jinping has constructed a singular political persona: of a leader who places the Communist Party and its authority above all, on top of the state, the economy and military. So it may have come as a surprise to see Xi usher China’s top entrepreneurs into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People earlier ...

If some of the most august independent analysts in the business feel their future lies inside a large US broker, does any research boutique have a future? There is still hope. Autonomous Research, the London-based firm set up in 2009 by Stuart Graham, the former head of Merrill Lynch & Co.’s European bank-stocks team, agreed to be taken over by ...