Banking regulators, and the lawmakers who set regulations, would make terrible comedians. Their timing is almost always way off. The most notorious example is the regulatory “streamlining” that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson proposed in March 2008 after the financial crisis had essentially already started. But there are others, like the 2004 switch that allowed broker-dealers to pile up debt. There ...

Travis Kalanick, the Uber founder, has set up a fund to invest in companies involved in ‘large-scale job creation.’ That would seem to be right up his alley: Uber has created lots of jobs. The question, though, is whether they are the kind of jobs that benefit society or, in the final analysis, their holders. A recent academic argument advances ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. sees initial public offerings and M&A driving Middle East deals this year in what the US bank expects to be its busiest in the region. Private sector mergers and state sell-offs as part of privatisation plans will accelerate, while corporate bond sales are also likely to rise, Sjoerd Leenart, the bank’s global head of corporate ...