What’s the most important bit of infrastructure to connect an international metropolis like China’s Pearl River Delta? A demolished border post. For all the excitement around the opening of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge last week, that’s probably the best lesson to draw from Beijing’s plan to draw Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Dongguan, Foshan and other cities into a single megalopolis. ...

As Italy digs in to resist European Union (EU) demands for budget moderation, some investors say only one thing can reverse the government’s spiraling borrowing costs: the collapse of the populist administration. The coalition’s determination to ramp up spending has pushed the yield on Italian bonds to highs not seen since the euro-area debt crisis. As long as the nation’s ...

Boeing Co. is a bright spot in a rough week for industrial earnings. The planemaker reported better-than-expected third-quarter results, and raised its guidance for 2018 adjusted profit. Boeing also maintained its goal of delivering 810 to 815 commercial airplanes this year, easing pre-earnings jitters over a relatively weak shipping rate in the third quarter. That should provide confidence that bottlenecks ...

Given recent market turmoil, it would easy to overlook the upcoming IPO of Niu Technologies, a Chinese manufacturer of electric mopeds. The $95 million the company plans to raise is a pittance compared to the billions burnt by Tesla Inc. But, the technologies developed by Niu and other pioneers of electric two-wheel vehicles will transform transportation as much as anything ...

Bloomberg The staggering growth of cloud computing can’t go on forever. And reports from tech companies that make data-center hardware and sell the services suggest the industry’s expansion is cooling. Western Digital Corp., a maker of memory chips, neatly listed everything that is suddenly wrong with the technology industry when it gave a disappointing forecast. A boom in spending by ...

Bloomberg In Haidilao International Holding Ltd.’s hotpot restaurants, robots are replacing chefs and waiters. Asia’s biggest listed restaurant chain by market value is partnering with Japan’s Panasonic Corp. to open what the two companies say is the world’s first eatery with a fully automated kitchen on October 28 in Beijing. At the new Haidilao restaurant, robots will take orders, prepare ...

Bloomberg The only person in a kimono at a recent Japanese government meeting on flying cars was Kotaro Chiba, a former online-game executive turned fina- ncier of a very specific kind. For Chiba, 44, who wears the kimono on special occasions to show his pride in Japanese culture, is gathering money for what he calls the Drone Fund. It invests ...

Bloomberg Mario Draghi defended the independence of central banks hours after Italian populists blamed him for adding to market tensions that threaten the health of the nation’s banks. “Credibility hinges on independence,” the European Central Bank president said in a speech in Brussels. “The central bank should not be subject to fiscal or political dominance and should be free to ...

Bloomberg India’s central bank wants more independence to regulate state-run banks as it seeks to clean up the country’s banking system, which has one of the highest stressed loan ratios among major economies. In a speech in Mumbai, Viral Acharya, deputy governor in charge of monetary policy, said the central bank has limited powers to discipline errant government-owned banks as ...

Bloomberg Russia’s central bank kept borrowing costs unchanged, pausing despite persistent inflation risks after a surprise hike last month. The key interest rate will stay at 7.5 percent, according to a statement. The decision was forecast by 39 of 41 economists surveyed by Bloomberg, with the rest predicting an increase to 7.75 percent. “Holding the rate unchanged is a good ...