Here’s a new twist in the Robert Mueller saga: A former top Senate staffer for Attorney General Jeff Sessions is nearing confirmation to head the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. Should his appointment worry people who want to protect the special counsel’s independence? As with any issue involving Mueller and the Trump White House, the answer reflects the supercharged atmosphere surrounding ...

Forecasting the long-run return on equities is one of the key challenges in financial planning. Jeremy Siegel, the author of “Stocks for the Long Run,” wrote that he had examined 210 years of stock returns and found that “the real return on a broadly diversified portfolio of stocks has averaged 6.6 percent per year.” Public pension funds make similar assumptions. ...

It looks a victory for aggrieved bondholders. Aviva Plc has had enough bad press and has kicked controversial plans to cancel its preference share class into the long grass. The decision isn’t entirely charitable. The British insurer may also have been influenced by the fact that likely cost of issuing new perpetual debt was beginning to tick up. But this ...