Bloomberg British financial advisers and pension managers face jail and increased fines under proposed legislation announced during the Queen’s Speech to mark the new parliamentary term. Penalties for the most serious offenses will carry a maximum sentence of seven years and a $1.26 million fine, according to a briefing note that accompanied a speech read by the Queen to UK ...

One word — “pathway” — is all it took to send the British pound rocketing against the US dollar. It had been a dire week in Brexit-land, with Boris Johnson’s do-or-die tactics failing to persuade the European Union (EU) to accept his new proposal on the Irish border. But suddenly came the surprising news that a meeting between the British ...

Big pieces of economic legislation tend to unleash the full power of unintended consequences. Consider Sarbanes-Oxley, the bipartisan law passed in 2002 in the wake of the accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. It did what it was intended to do, which was ensure companies gave accurate accounts of their finances. But it has also led to debacles ...