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Big tech firms have dug a moat

As US anti-monopoly authorities weigh possible investigations into America’s technology superpowers, there is one advantage the government can’t touch: the size, scale and might of the tech giants’ computer networks, logistics machines and other infrastructure. This week, Bloomberg News wrote about the irony of the last decade of flourishing technology startups. Many of the upstarts might not exist without the ...

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Why venture capitalists like expensive groceries

Nobody likes a big grocery bill. Unless you’re a venture capitalist, of course. With the cost of produce skyrocketing in China, hot money is flooding towards fresh-food operators. Yonghui Superstores Co., a $14 billion firm that counts Tencent Holdings Ltd. as a strategic investor, now trades above 40 times 2019 earnings. Shares of Jiajiayue Group Co., a smaller supermarket chain, ...

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Italy faces more than 40-bn euro reckoning

Italy’s populist leaders have spent the best part of a year looking for the outside forces who were driving up the country’s cost of issuing public debt. The answer, it turns out, was closer to home. This week the yield on Italy’s 10-year bonds fell below 2 percent, while the interest on two-year debt turned negative. The yield spread with ...

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