I remember vividly the economic and financial mess President Barack Obama inherited when he was sworn in as the 44th US president eight years ago. Growth and trade were imploding, millions of Americans were losing their jobs, and the stock market was in free fall. This frightful combination was also playing out in many other countries, fueling a sense …

  Politics and meanness are undermining an attempt to create a new French aerospace champion. Safran SA’s 9.7 billion euro ($10.3 billion) offer for industry supplier Zodiac Aerospace is structured in a way that threatens to give the state a better deal than ordinary shareholders. Safran has secured the agreement of Zodiac’s board for a deal that’s been circling for …

  The biggest long-term threat to the iPhone isn’t Android, Samsung Electronics Co. or China’s bevy of cheap phone makers. Instead, it’s a deceptively simple idea: Apps work better if you embed them in a single program, rather than let them proliferate across your home screen. WeChat, China’s leading social media app, just launched a new platform with exactly that …