The much-anticipated arrival of virtual banking in Singapore is unlikely to be an “aha” moment for consumer finance, but corporate banking will be different. One should expect disruption. The application period for Singapore’s first internet-only lenders ended last week with five known hopefuls, so far, for as many licenses on offer. The move mirrors the grant of eight licenses in ...

Workers are delivering more, and they’re getting a lot less,” argued former Vice President Joe Biden in a speech at the Brookings Institution this summer. “There’s no correlation now between productivity and wages. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic presidential rival, agrees. Her campaign website states that “wages have largely stagnated,” even though “worker productivity has risen steadily.” The claim that ...

Vivendi SA investors should be sighing with relief. The French media conglomerate announced that it plans to sell 10% of its Universal Music Group (UMG) record label to a group led by Tencent Holdings Ltd., the Chinese internet giant. The 3 billion euro purchase ($3.4 billion) implies an equity valuation of 30 billion euros for all of UMG, as the music ...