Bloomberg Slovakia’s interior minister will resign to prevent the collapse of Prime Minister Robert Fico’s government, which is trying to fend off calls for early elections following the murder of an investigative journalist. Interior Minister Robert Kalinak told reporters on Monday he hopes his resignation, sought by the opposition and the junior coalition Most party, will help to stabilise the ...

Bloomberg Japan’s government said on Monday that the names of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, his wife and his finance minister were deleted from documents at the heart of a land scandal that erupted last year, a revelation that threatens to derail his administration and its economic strategy. Finance Minister Taro Aso apologised and said an internal investigation was ongoing as ...

China’s defenders are putting an optimistic spin on the country’s tilt towards one-man rule. Now that President Xi Jinping has set himself up to remain in power indefinitely, they suggest, he will have the runway to see through painful but necessary economic reforms that have long been resisted by various actors within China’s political system. In other words, even if ...

India’s unreformed banking system needs a massive privatization drive. The sooner this dawns on authorities, the better for taxpayers, investors and borrowers. Exhibit A is an index of share prices of state-run banks. It took one $2 billion fraud at government-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) to snuff out all the excitement over a $32 billion recapitalization of these moth-eaten institutions. ...

There’s a strange thing about the fear going through the global mining industry after the Democratic Republic of Congo signed an order to lift royalties last week: Compared with most other countries, these levies are still relatively low. The existing 2 percent rate on copper extraction compares with royalties five times that level in Chile and Peru, the two biggest ...

President Donald Trump’s approach to trade mainly offends allies for no reason, counters imaginary threats, and undermines deals that benefit the US. At the same time, his administration is also addressing a legitimate trade dispute: China’s alleged theft of intellectual property and forced technology transfers. True to form, the president appears to favor a response that would make the problem ...

The government of French President Emmanuel Macron recently announced an ambitious effort to reform the SNCF, the national railway operator. It’s an endeavor that puts Macron on a straight collision course with France’s most obstreperous unions. This is exactly the sort of direct confrontation that Macron has thus far avoided in his attempts to reform France’s sluggish economy. If the ...

Ignore the noise. China’s long-delayed property tax is probably still at least three years away, despite a flurry of recent announcements. The concept of a levy on homeowners collected by local authorities is certainly gaining currency. Premier Li Keqiang said China “will steadily push forward legislation” in his annual report to the National People’s Congress. The tax may be based ...

The central issue in British politics is not, as you might have thought, Brexit. It’s housing. New analysis shows that Britain’s long-festering housing shortages contributed to the 2017 election that cost the Conservatives their majority. While Brexit divisions cut across party lines, Britain’s housing problems overwhelmingly benefit Labour. Now, it seems the government may finally be grasping the extent of ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG plans to raise as much as 1.8 billion euros ($2.2 billion) in an initial public offering of its asset-management unit, a key pillar of the German lender’s turnaround strategy. The offering values the asset manager at as much as 7.2 billion euros, a valuation that would align it with its bigger peer Amundi SA. Nippon Life ...