Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank (SNB), which has the lowest interest rate among the world’s major central banks, may be done cutting. SNB President Thomas Jordan and his fellow policy makers will keep the deposit rate unchanged at minus 0.75 percent until at least the end of the first quarter of 2019, according to the median forecast in Bloomberg’s ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England (BoE) has been granted the ability to limit borrowing by investors in rental housing, increasing the central bank’s control over the property market. The BoE’s Financial Policy Committee has been given new powers to cap buy-to-let mortgage lending by regulating loan-to-value and interest coverage ratios, the UK Treasury said in a statement. UK benchmark interest ...

  Seventeen days before President Donald Trump, his spoken oath of office still lingering in the wintry air, lifts his left hand from Scripture (a leather-bound edition of “The Art of the Deal”), the Republican-controlled Congress will begin working. Fittingly, on Jan. 3 the First Branch of government will go first, flexing its somewhat atrophied Article I muscles. When Trump ...

  If you’re willing to strap on a headset and headphones, virtual reality can immerse you in another world. This teleportation act is great for gaming, but it also got me thinking: Can the distraction-dimming effects of VR transport the typical office worker out of an open office and away from chatty co-workers, and perhaps help with focus and productivity ...

  Visiting Europe this week, President Barack Obama urged leaders of the European Union to be more forgiving of Greece and its debts. No doubt reflecting on events back home, he said that economic stress and suspicion of unresponsive institutions were empowering populism. Addressing those worries needed to be a high priority, and supporting Greece’s flattened economy would help. He’s ...

  A dopting green economy is the best way to move towards sustainable development. The UAE has become the first member of World Green Economy Organisation (WGEO). It is a huge step to make the world realize the importance of transforming the business landscape and decarbonizing the economy. A green economy would need coordination between various financial institutions, the civil ...

  When he retired from Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal in 2012, Justice Kemal Bokhary predicted that a “storm of unprecedented ferocity” was gathering over the city’s judicial system and rule of law. Though dismissed as alarmist at the time, he’s turned out to be right. And all of Hong Kong’s friends — both within and abroad — should ...

  Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and chief executive officer of Facebook Inc., finds himself in some hot water. His company is being blamed (or credited, depending upon your point of view) for Donald Trump’s election because its algorithms facilitated the circulation of misleading or false news stories. This controversy is misdirected: it should be less about Facebook’s algorithms and more about ...

  Red Jahncke Americans pay far more for branded prescription drugs than people in any other developed nation, exactly the kind of bad deal that President-elect Donald Trump decried repeatedly in his campaign. The U.S. was reminded of this outrage in September when it learned that drugmaker Mylan NV has been charging Americans more than $600 for its EpiPen two-pack ...

  Abu Dhabi / Emirates Business Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, announced an expanded codeshare agreement with Hong Kong Airlines, an internationally-acclaimed Skytrax 4-star airline, to give air travellers enhanced connections between Australasia, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America. The two airlines have obtained regulatory approval to codeshare on nine additional routes, bringing ...