Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, wrote a provocative op-ed in the New York Times last weekend. Titled “When Dead Companies Don’t Die,” it argues that unprecedented monetary stimulus from global central banks created a “fat and slow” world, dominated by large companies and plagued by a swarm of “zombie firms” — those that should be ...

FedEx Corp. has managed to fall out of a basement window. Expectations heading into the parcel-delivery company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings were low. In the past six months, the company cut its 2019 outlook twice amid a weakening global trade backdrop; announced a series of puzzling executive departures; became a candidate for inclusion on China’s list of unreliable entities; and dropped ...

When the maker of the top-selling arthritis drug says it’s buying a leader in anti-wrinkle treatments, you’d be forgiven if your initial response to the news was that it seems like a match made in heaven. But take a closer look, and AbbVie Inc.’s $63 billion purchase of Botox maker Allergan Plc isn’t such a perfect fit. AbbVie is desperate ...

President Donald Trump’s decision to restart sales of US technology products to Huawei Technologies Co. may ease tensions with China, and even help end the trade war. Yet as far as deals go, this is set to be one of Trump’s worst. It doesn’t stop the technology cold war underway, and weakens the US stance that Huawei isn’t just a ...

The internet was supposed to render geography irrelevant. But the corporations that dominate the internet have turned out to be remarkably concentrated, geographically speaking. In internet publishing and web search portals, a somewhat ungainly but very important North American Industry Classification System category, 58 percent of all US jobs in December could be found in just five counties, and more ...

So much for deleveraging. China’s biggest shadow lenders are back. On the surface, it may look like regulators have managed to shrink the role of trust companies, after a wide-ranging, mo-nths-long crackdown on China’s financial underbelly. Assets und-er management at these lightly regulated non-bank financial firms – a hybrid of private equity, asset management and lending – posted their first ...

Rare is the week that doesn’t bring some new controversy over someone or something being banned from Twitter or Facebook for being too offensive. As regular readers know, I prefer more speech to less speech, but this column isn’t about what content rules private companies should enforce. Today I’m wearing my fair-process hat. These mighty controversies over kicking users off ...

Bloomberg US stocks rallied to all-time highs after a trade truce with China, though gains eased after measures of manufacturing activity showed growth slowing in the world’s largest economy. Gold, the yen and Treasuries all retreated. The S&P 500 surpassed its intraday record, with chipmakers surging after President Donald Trump agreed to ease a ban on American companies supplying Chinese ...

Bloomberg Germany’s DAX Index is starting the second half of the year with a bang as the benchmark is set to enter a bull market. The gauge rose as much as 1.8 percent in the first hour of trading on Monday, bringing the total gain to 22 percent since a closing low on December 27. The guage is up 1.5 ...

Bloomberg The dollar fell against the yuan and commodity-related currencies in Asia-Pacific trading on Monday after the US and China backed down from threats to escalate their trade war. Haven currencies weakened. The yen and Swiss franc, which tend to act as refuges in times of market distress, declined against the greenback, while the Australian dollar — a proxy for ...