“Trade wars,” President Donald Trump recently declared on Twitter, “are good, and easy to win.” But it’s questionable whether the president’s proposed tariffs — a tax of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum — will be a war or an act of friendly fire. As I recently wrote, tariffs are generally not a good way ...

The deepening Moritomo Gakuen school land-sale scandal could put an end to Abenomics. Japan’s Finance Minister Taro Aso refused to step down on Monday after it was revealed staff at his ministry had ordered the alteration of documents linked to the sale of government-owned property to the nationalist school operator. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he wants Aso to take ...

Strange what qualifies as good news from the White House these days. President Donald Trump’s order on tariffs was more limited than first threatened and reassuringly vague. So yes, it could have been worse. Trump has given ground in the face of frantic representations from many Republicans and leaders of American business. “We’re going to be very flexible,” he says. ...

The potential for a trade war between the US and China may be intensifying, but don’t forget the innovation war. Although the US has stopped short of labeling China a “Strategic Competitor,” the Trump administration has effectively perpetuated the myth that China only excels by stealing intellectual property from others. Investors shouldn’t believe the rhetoric. With the world’s largest cashless ...

The expectations could not have been higher. After the election of Emmanuel Macron in France, there was hope that the euro zone could finally press ahead with an overhaul of its economic governance, which would make it more resilient in a crisis. The contours of the planned deal were very clear: Fiscally conservative countries, such as Germany, would agree to ...

From fish sauce to dairy, lumpy investment bets in Vietnam have typically been placed on the country’s teeming working class and its growing propensity to consume. Warburg Pincus has already been there and done that. The US buyout firm is now using its web of connections to wager on the nation’s new rich. The $370 million check it’s writing for ...

This year’s Pritzker Prize winner Balkrishna Doshi is best known for Aranya, a low-cost housing project in the central Indian city of Indore Here in the City of London, you can step out of Bank underground station and walk half a mile in any direction to see what Pritzker Prize-winning architects can do when they push themselves. At Bank intersection ...

Bloomberg China is giving its central bank the power to write the rules for the financial sector, as part of a swee-ping overhaul aimed at closing regulatory loopholes and curbing risk in the $43 trillion banking and insurance industries. The China Banking Regulatory Commission and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission will be mer-ged in the biggest industry overhaul since 2003. ...

Bloomberg India’s HDFC Bank Ltd., the world’s most-expensive lender, has appointed arrangers including Bank of America Corp, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse Group AG for a 155 billion rupee ($2.38 billion) planned share sale, people with knowledge of the matter said. The lender has also appointed JPMorgan Chase & Co., Edelweiss Financial Services Ltd., IIFL Holdings Ltd. and JM Financial ...

Bloomberg Ghana’s Energy Commercial Bank Ltd plans to raise about 330 million cedis ($75 million) through an initial public offering as the lender prepares to meet the regulator’s new threshold for capital requirements. The share sale will start next month, with IC Securities Ltd acting as the transaction adviser for the rights issue, Charles Nixon Yeboah, a spokesman for the ...