Japan’s corporate culture is stuck in a bad place. But the coronavirus pandemic might have given it just the nudge it needs to get out of the trap. From the 1960s through the 1980s, the country developed a corporate system that worked well. Managers, rather than shareholders, controlled companies, allowing long-term planning and investment, keeping employment levels high and fostering ...

Like all good financial aphorisms, the notion that “profit is an opinion, while cash is a fact” contains a kernel of truth. It’s certainly a lot easier for companies to massage quarterly earnings than it is to lose track of how much cash they have in the bank. Ultimately, investors use projected cash flows to determine what a business is ...

Empty supermarket shelves in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic have put grow-your-own back on the world’s agenda, and nowhere more so than in China, where ensuring food supplies for its huge population has been a political priority for decades. Simply diversifying imports may not satisfy hawkish voices. Emphasizing domestic production, though, will extract a heavy toll for a ...

The Covid crisis has required strong and prompt action by central banks consistent with their mandates. In March, disorderly conditions reached the core financial markets, posing a very real threat to the stability of the financial system — by far the most serious threat since the global financial crisis. Underlying this disorder in markets was an economic downturn almost unprecedented ...

Bloomberg The final bids for Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd will show how much appetite private investors really have for an airline industry that’s been battered by the coronavirus pandemic. Private equity firms Bain Capital LP and Cyrus Capital Partners LP made final and binding offers for the airline on Monday, administrator Deloitte said in a statement. The Australian carrier collapsed ...

Bloomberg US officials rejected additional flights proposed by Chinese airlines but said they would reconsider if the Beijing government adjusts its policies affecting American passenger carriers. In a statement, the Transportation Department said it disapproved service schedules submitted by four China-based carriers that currently are allowed to make four combined flights to the US each week, plus additional proposals submitted ...

Bloomberg France plans to ban commercial air travel on the country’s shortest domestic routes in a bid to prevent low-cost carriers picking up links Air France is being forced to abandon as part of the terms of a bailout package. “If we are asking things of Air France, it’s not so that low-cost companies can come along and start their ...

Bloomberg American Airlines Group Inc braced its balance sheet with $3.5 billion in new financing, diverging from its recent reliance on federal aid as the coronavirus pandemic suppresses travel demand. The carrier is selling $750 million of shares and the same amount of senior convertible notes due in 2025, American said in a statement, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report. ...

Bloomberg Bed Bath & Beyond Inc is looking to sell its Christmas Tree Shops and Cost Plus World Market chains, according to people familiar with the matter, part of an ongoing makeover of the home-goods company. The people declined to be identified because the process isn’t public. Activist investors pressured the company to oust Chief Executive Officer Steven Temares last ...

Bloomberg Vladimir Putin said he’ll consider running for a fifth presidential term in 2024, arguing that the hunt for any successor risks paralysing Russia’s government as the next election nears. “I don’t rule out such a possibility,” if the necessary amendment to the constitution is approved, Putin said in a Rossiya 1 television documentary broadcast. “I haven’t made up my ...