If you’re nostalgic for the 2008-09 financial crisis, you can cheer up. Another debacle may be on its way. Its epicenter would be Italy, which may threaten the rest of the world economy. Under the worst-case assumptions, Italy could abandon the euro — the single currency now used by 19 countries — and experience a full-blown financial meltdown that would ...

From the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, he has said he wants to make trade “fair.” For too long, he argued, American companies and workers suffered as trading partners used tactics that stole jobs, damaged US industry and widened deficits. The implication was that he’d work to strip away the remaining tariffs and other hurdles that tilted the playing ...

However you regard the veracity of a short-seller’s allegations against Samsonite International SA, one thing is certain: Targeting a Massachusetts-based firm with a wide shareholder base seems to be a much a safer bet than going after the hordes of opaque Chinese companies in Hong Kong. The baggage company, whose hard-shell suitcases recall the glory days of flying, has become ...

About 42 million people received benefits in the 2017 fiscal year from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — still widely known as food stamps, although the paper coupons were replaced by debit cards more than a decade ago. That’s a lot of people! It’s almost 13 percent of the US population, which is down from a couple of years ago ...

No one has learned any lessons. That’s the discouraging takeaway from a Wall Street Journal article about the nearly unchecked power held by founders of many young technology companies. The people bankrolling those companies are responsible for providing oversight, too, but don’t seem to be doing much of it. The Journal reported that two-thirds of US startups with venture-capital investors ...

China’s electric-car battery champion has had its wings clipped, or so it seems. Investors should breathe a sigh of relief. Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., which has been gearing up for an initial public offering for the past year, is now expected to raise a net 5.46 billion yuan ($853 million), less than half its target as of March. The reduction ...

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation has been in effect for less than a week. It was always clear that a vast number of companies would comply in only the most perfunctory way, at least while the law was being tested. But the big tech companies, sure to face scrutiny, were expected to show a little more rigor. Instead, ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will review plans to sell Air India after his administration’s most high-profile privatisation offer ended in a whimper with no buyers showing interest in the unprofitable flag carrier. The government will make changes to the plan, if needed, Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said. As the deadline to show preliminary interest expired on ...

Bloomberg Sears Holdings Corp. kicked off another fiscal year with declining sales from a dwindling number of stores, and more closings are on the way. The operator of Sears and Kmart stores posted a first-quarter loss of $3.93 a diluted share. Revenue fell due to fewer stores and a 12 percent drop in comparable-store sales. The Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based retailer ...

Bloomberg British Airways (BA) owner IAG SA has suspended negotiations with Airbus SE over a possible deal for additional A380 superjumbos, a potential setback for the already-struggling program and Airbus’s new sales chief, according to people familiar with the matter. The carrier had been weighing an order for close to 10 of the double-deckers after Airbus managed to secure a ...