Could London soon be known more for what arrives on its stock market than what gets taken off it? Private-equity firms feasted wantonly on UK stocks in 2021. Bid activity has softened lately and a tougher national-security regime from January threatens to slow takeovers further, with the result that fewer firms leave the London market. At the same time, there ...

  Governments, consumer internet behemoths, large banks and fintech firms will compete fiercely in 2022 to bring our cashless future a little closer — with Asia at the epicenter of innovation. In China, where authorities are increasingly uneasy with the domestic private sector’s control on citizens’ data, the state will seek to reassert its might: The Beijing Winter Olympics will ...

  Wall Street seers expect the benchmark S&P 500 Index to generate earnings per share that are up 46% this year from 2020’s depressed level, with growth decelerating to 8% in 2022, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Even that lower number for the coming year may be too rosy. Covid-19 isn’t going away, as shown by the fast-spreading omicron ...