Italian banks embarking on a round of consolidation was always a matter of when, not if. Meager profitability, a fragmented industry and a desperate need for investment are obvious ingredients for M&A. Lenders have rid themselves of most of the bad loans that crippled Italy’s banks after the financial crisis, so dealmaking should be unhindered. Intesa Sanpaolo SpA’s surprise $5.3 ...

SoftBank Group Corp. became vulnerable to activist attack by Elliott Management Corp. because of the harmful noise generated by the Japanese technology investor’s giant Vision Fund. That noise just won’t die down. A report appeared in the Financial Times that Vision Fund head Rajeev Misra is looking to raise a multi-billion dollar fund to buy listed stocks. The blueprint was ...

Walmart Inc. has been battling to take on Amazon.com Inc., but it was weakness in old-fashioned categories of retailing, not whizzy tech, that undermined its holiday performance and prompted it to come up short of expectations for this year. And that pressure’s not going away anytime soon, considering the continued onslaught from rivals that excel at back-to-basics shopkeeping, such as ...