TV naturalist Sir David Attenborough made his viewers weep last month with an exposé on how plastics are polluting the oceans, harming marine animals and fish. Last week, British prime minister Theresa May announced a slew of new measures to discourage plastics use, including plastic-free supermarket aisles and an expanded levy on plastic bags. A ban on microbeads in cosmetics ...

What’s not to like about Singapore’s property market? Sales in 2017 touched a four-year high. Developers paid homeowners S$8.5 billion ($6.4 billion) — the most since 2007 — to vacate their homes so new apartment complexes could be built. Prices have stopped falling, and Credit Suisse Group AG expects them to rise between 5 percent and 10 percent this year. ...

After a 14-day run, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index on Monday came close to breaking through its historical record set more than a decade ago. Technical analysts now caution the benchmark looks overbought. Its strength, however, shouldn’t be surprising. That’s because the Hang Seng today isn’t what it was a decade ago. One of the most conspicuous changes has been ...

Last week, the UK government asked German business leaders for help in securing a good deal with the European Union on financial services. The request deserves to be taken seriously. Europe’s businesses have much to gain from keeping London as a thriving financial center. The City is by far the most significant financial hub in Europe. In 2016, the UK ...

If Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is sincere in a recent post about gradually taking the media element out of “social media,” he’s striking a powerful blow for tech self-regulation, as well as preparing to pay a heavy price for the evolution of his vision. But getting the genie back into the bottle may be too difficult even for ...

Current debates about stock valuations resemble the arcane meditations of medieval monks. But the real drivers are more mundane. Traders, weaned on tales of financial derring-do like ‘The Big Short,’ want to be the ones who profit from the next crash. The problem is that it may be easier to predict the crash than to profit from it. To make ...

For decades, the donation bin has offered consumers in rich countries a guilt-free way to unload their old clothing. In a virtuous and profitable cycle, a global network of traders would collect these garments, grade them, and transport them around the world to be recycled, worn again, or turned into rags and stuffing. Now that cycle is breaking down. Fashion ...

LONDON / Reuters Saudi Aramco has not invited UBS and Bank of America Merrill Lynch to pitch for senior advisory roles in its stock market listing because they have not lent money to the state oil giant in recent years, according to five finance sources. The two investment banks, among the world’s biggest, have not been asked to attend meetings ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank (ECB) should adjust its policy guidance before the summer and shouldn’t have any problems ending net asset purchases in one swoop after September, Governing Council member Ardo Hansson said. While the Estonian policy maker judged the ECB’s current stance as broadly appropriate, he argued in an interview with German newspaper Boersen-Zeitung that there was a ...

Bloomberg Indian sovereign bonds and the rupee tumbled after a central bank official warned banks they can’t keep relying on the regulator to manage their interest-rate risks, as the rout in the debt market extended into its sixth month. The regular use of regulatory help “isn’t desirable from the point of view of efficient price discovery” in the bond market ...