Last week, before news broke about the hacking of Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc., I conducted a little Twitter poll. The results were enlightening, and somewhat disheartening. At the end of last week, someone stole 523 million NEM coins, worth around $500 million, from Coincheck. It took about eight hours for the exchange to even notice that its wallet had ...

Brexit’s pending arrival has some companies pulling out. Hong Kong investors are going the other way. With the purchase of London’s iconic Cheesegrater building and the city’s Walkie Talkie skyscraper, investors from Hong Kong were the single biggest buyers of office property last year, accounting for 44 percent of total funds spent. It’s not just the weaker pound, but also ...

What a difference a few time zones make. Shares in Wynn Resorts Ltd. fell 10.1 percent in the US on Friday after the Wall Street Journal reported that dozens of former employees had alleged sexual misconduct by the group’s founder and Chief Executive Officer Steve Wynn. Investors in Hong Kong were far less concerned. Stock in Wynn Macau Ltd. was ...

The euro is on the move, due to positive fundamental and technical reasons. And there is likely still more upside ahead — potentially a lot more. The realities of a strong economy will put pressure on the European Central Bank’s president, Mario Draghi, to start mapping an exit strategy from ultra-accommodative measures before inflation becomes a problem. In 2017, the ...

The end of US leadership is on everyone’s lips. Today’s installment is the Treasury secretary’s endorsement of a weaker dollar. Not so fast. Despite the way the ideal of a ‘strong dollar’ has been thrown around in official rhetoric the last couple of decades, the reality is that Treasury secretaries of both political colors have dialed it up and dialed ...

It would be an overstatement to say 2017 was a bad year for Starbucks Corp. But the coffee giant did start to look a bit less invincible. It posted its slowest same-store sales growth since the Great Recession. It disappointed investors in November when it offered a lower long-term earnings outlook. If that had you worried about Starbucks, then the ...

On April 22, Earth Day, might have a bit of extra significance this year. It might be the day that, for the first time, a great world city runs out of water. On that day, according to the local government of Cape Town, water in the reservoirs that feed this most beautiful of coastal cities will drop below critical levels, ...

Bloomberg The enthusiasm in the oil markets is breaking records. Hedge funds reported record wagers on continued price increases for both US and global oil benchmarks, along with gasoline and diesel. Meanwhile, producers are hedging production at record rates as oil experiences its best January since 2006. “There is a lot of interest in the direction of crude oil,” Rob ...

Bloomberg Britain probably will risk more energy supply shortages after leaving the European Union, a panel of lawmakers from the House of Lords said, adding to pressure on the government to bring forward measures that protect consumers from higher costs. “It’s likely that the UK’s withdrawal from the EU will lead to less-efficient energy trade, which could in turn increase ...

BAGHDAD / Reuters Iraq plans to build an oil refinery at the port of Fao on the Gulf with two Chinese companies, and is seeking investors to build three more, the oil ministry said on its website on Monday. The refinery in Fao will have a 300,000 barrel-per-day capacity and include a petrochemical plant, it said. Two other refineries, each ...