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Reality is beginning to bite in the FTSE 100 as some high-yielding stocks give up on generous dividends. But many British companies are still continuing to offer jaw-dropping payouts when what investors really crave is growth. The dividend culture of the FTSE 100 has long been an oddity. Its investors have received a far higher proportion of their total returns ...

With worries about a currency war growing and bond yields collapsing, investors have reached for their usual haven of gold. Only this time it has a friend (as my colleague Tim Culpan wrote): Bitcoin. Gold’s dollar price has risen 7 percent this month, Bitcoin’s by 18 percent. This apparent use of the two commodities as companion ports in a storm ...

Christine Lagarde is still to be confirmed as the European Central Bank’s next president, but work is already piling up on her desk. The euro zone is in danger of becoming the biggest collateral victim of the US-China trade war and Lagarde will need all her political skills to plot an escape route from the threat of recession. The euro ...

Summer wildfires devouring Siberian forests are hardly unusual, but this year’s are a bigger worry than normal because clouds of smoke have reached big cities in the Asian part of Russia and because the authorities have reacted clumsily. The extra attention from the Russian and global media is welcome, even if it’s tinged with unnecessary alarmism: Russia needs to start ...

Airlines are fundamental to the self-image of sovereign territories. The largest one in any country is routinely dubbed a ”flag carrier,” as if it was the leader of a naval squadron. No wonder Beijing has it in for Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. China’s civil aviation authority has ordered Cathay to bar air crew who supported Hong Kong’s recent protests from ...

In 1953, mountaineers Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first confirmed summiting of Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak. Recently, Everest has grown so popular that photos are surfacing showing huge lines of climbers waiting to surmount that same peak. On rarefied ground where once only Norgay and Hillary tread, now climbers are dying because of overcrowding. A less ...

Bloomberg Mario Draghi’s plans for a parting stimulus shot before he retires as European Central Bank president are laced with even more suspense than usual. While the ECB is widely expected to cut interest rates next month, the prospect of a renewed round of asset purchases is shrouded in uncertainty. Investors must judge how much quantitative easing the euro-zone economy ...

Bloomberg Three years into Commerzbank AG Chief Executive Officer Martin Zielke’s turnaround, the party’s over. Shares of the lender fell to a record low, capping a roller coaster ride that saw the stock more than double after the CEO announced his plan, buoyed by expectations for higher interest rates and consolidation in European banking. Zielke has refocused the bank on ...

Bloomberg Australia’s back-to-back interest-rate cuts are flowing through the financial system and into the economy, while the falling currency should provide a similar stimulus to sustained declines of previous years, a senior Reserve Bank official said. “The transmission of monetary policy in Australia to financial conditions is working in the usual way,” Christopher Kent, assistant governor for financial markets, said ...

Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank (SNB) may have to do more than pump billions into foreign exchange markets into prevent the franc from appreciating to a damaging level. With data suggesting the central bank recently intervened after the currency rose to the highest since 2017 against the euro, an increasing number of economists expect the SNB to reduce its benchmark ...