TOKYO — World War II ended 75 years ago, but not all countries commemorate it on the same day. Wednesday is the anniversary of the formal September 2, 1945, surrender of Japan to the United States, when documents were signed officially ending years of bloody fighting in a ceremony aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. It’s known as V-J Day in some countries. But some nations mark August 15 as the war’s end, the day Japan’s emperor made a speech announcing the surrender.
By Aibing Guo, Elena Mazneva & Judy Chen | Bloomberg
By Netty Ismail, Aline Oyamada, Lilian Karunungan & Srinivasan Sivabalan | Bloomberg
By Eric Martin & Josh Wingrove | Bloomberg
AS the European Union (EU) braces for political battles over its post-Brexit budget, a farm in the poorest member-country shows what’s at stake.
While tens of billions of dollars gush into Saudi Arabia on a potential MSCI Inc. upgrade to emerging-market status, it will take more to keep investors enthused.
Denmark may be open to financial incentives to buy electric cars after seeing a dramatic drop in sales of nonpolluting vehicles, according to Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen.
Initial coin offerings (ICOs) have raised billions of dollars for start-ups while attracting criminals and authorities around the globe. Now, the young market may get some help cleaning up from the Big Four consulting firms.
Scandals, bad debts, ATM cash shortages—India’s banking system has experienced them all in recent months and the bad run is starting to have repercussions for both the broader economy and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
By Blake Schmidt & Yoojung Lee / Bloomberg
By Kyunghee Park / Bloomberg
AS the US and China threaten to impose tariffs on goods from aluminum to wine, the two nations are waging a separate economic battle that could determine who owns the next wave of computing.
When Damien Maguire moved to the countryside outside Dublin, he struggled to keep the lights on at home because of the town’s constant power outages. He found a solution inside his electric cars: Their batteries.
Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, credited with inventing the World Wide Web, tweeted up a storm last Thursday, reassuring Internet users that they could reassert control over their data—and the Web’s future—after the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandals. He’s right, but not necessarily in the way he imagines.
Glitches with Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc. engines that have dogged Boeing Co.’s 787 wide-body jet are also an issue for the competing A330neo model from Airbus SE.
India has much to learn from the opening of China’s onshore bond market.
China’s incoming central bank governor, Yi Gang, signaled that he’ll push to maintain the course of financial liberalization set by his predecessor Zhou Xiaochuan.
Shortly after a $2-billion bank fraud was uncovered last month at India’s state-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB), a picture emerged of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the alleged fraudster.
EON SE’S €22-billion ($27.1-billion) bid for Innogy SE establishes a German energy champion after Angela Merkel’s radical energy policy wrought years of upheaval on the country’s once-mighty utilities.
Picture a bank that lends $1 billion to small businesses in 12 months, holds $150 billion in corporate bonds, runs the world’s largest money-market fund, offers mobile payments and credit cards, and gives customers cash balances that can be topped up across thousands of homely brick-and-mortar outlets.
Oil risks sliding back under $60 a barrel as a surge in US shipments to Asia threatens to undermine a deal between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and its allies, according to ING Groep NV.
IN front of the Petroleum Club of Midland, Texas—capital of the booming Permian shale region—an electronic display flashes two crucial pieces of information: the oil price and the number of drilling rigs.
Technology companies and service providers are questioning key parts of Hong Kong’s plan to allow dual-class shares, just as firms, including Xiaomi Corp. and Tencent Music Entertainment Group, are considering going public.
China stepped up its push to curb financial risk, cutting its budget-deficit target for the first time since 2012, and setting a growth goal of around 6.5 percent that omitted last year’s aim for a faster pace if possible.
The removal of presidential term limits should guarantee one thing for investors—their China portfolios will be increasingly tied to one man.
Divorces are messy, and cryptocurrencies are helping to make them a whole lot more so.
For decades, Saudi Arabia was the voice of moderation within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), pushing back against the urging of members like Venezuela and Iran for higher oil prices. That role seems to be shifting.
Shares of India’s government-controlled banks fell on Monday as more lenders disclosed exposure to one of the nation’s biggest frauds.
When will it finally stop?
Australia’s banks, rocked by years of scandals and wrongdoing, risk having further misconduct exposed as a powerful government-appointed inquiry into the nation’s financial industry starts.
European banks are generally safer and stronger than they were when the European Central Bank (ECB) stepped in as the pan-continental financial supervisor three years ago.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida— SpaceX’s hot new monster rocket makes its launch debut this week, blasting off from the same pad that hoisted men to the moon a half-century ago.
AKOBO, South Sudan—It’s been almost two years since Deng Machar’s three young children were abducted from his home and likely sold for cattle. Sitting in South Sudan’s opposition-held town of Akobo, the 35-year-old pointed to the dirt beneath his feet.
The value trade is finally having its day in the sun—in China. While chasing bargain stocks in overheating markets around the world has been a losing strategy, it’s a surprisingly successful play in Shanghai.
Nine years since the birth of Bitcoin, central banks around the world are increasingly recognizing the potential upsides—and downsides—of digital currencies.
Chinese drug companies have been on a tear in the US stock market. Now, entrepreneurs and investors betting on the Asian country’s fledgling biotechnology industry see another reason for optimism.
Aung Kyaw Moe and Jun Hasegawa have a lot in common.
Shafi Ahmed dons a pair of digital sunglasses and explains how the tiny lenses built into its black plastic frame, which can capture high-resolution images, are transforming how doctors get trained in operating rooms.
ON a day when billions in profits and losses would be determined by split-second trades, the salaried professionals of Japan’s financial markets were glued to their news terminals. Another group was staring at the feed of an anonymous Twitter account.
Global pharmaceutical companies have bemoaned for years India’s capricious policies on prices and patents. Now the government needs billions of dollars for its “Make in India” program, why can’t the industry get a fairer deal?
For Greece, 2018 is a crucial year.
You’d think the Indian economy had returned to rosy health. It seems to have recovered from two enormous disruptions—Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision just over a year ago to withdraw 86 percent of the currency in circulation, and the poorly planned rollout in the middle of 2017 of a new goods-and-services tax. Exports are no longer declining, as they had for several quarters; indeed, for the last month that data is available, they rose 30 percent. The Purchasing Managers’ Index expanded the fastest it has in five years. At least one international ratings agency has upgraded India’s credit rating.
Singapore’s economy expanded 3.5 percent this year, more than double the initial government forecast as the country benefited from the global economic upswing, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his New Year message last Sunday.
By Tobin Harshaw / Bloomberg View
WASHINGTON—In the first month of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, an American scholar quietly met with North Korean officials and relayed a message: The new administration in Washington appreciated an extended halt in the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests. It might just offer a ray of hope.
By Sam Chambers & Tom Beardsworth | Bloomberg
By Paul Geitner | Bloomberg
By Mark Burton | Bloomberg
These days, every big finance company worth its salt is finding ways to boost its bottom line with technology. Few are going quite as far as Ping An Insurance (Group) Co.
A decade ago, Bulgarians flooded the streets in celebration of their ex-communist nation joining the European Union (EU). There was a light show in the skies above the capital. Then-Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev called it a “dream come true.”
Anyone with a stake in Sweden’s property market should make space for Thursday in their calendar. That’s when they’ll get fresh clues as to whether they are facing a temporary blip or the start of a full-blown crash.
Billionaire Masayoshi Son may be getting closer to achieving his dream of making SoftBank Group Corp. the world’s biggest investor in technologies. The reason has to do with the main patron of Son’s $100-billion investment plan, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
AS stocks surge and consumer prices inch higher, investors say it’s time for the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to reduce equity purchases that have been criticized for distorting the market.
Less than a month after being fired as head of Angola’s state-owned oil company, Isabel dos Santos says she is studying new deals.
Apple Inc.’s Tim Cook and Google’s Sundar Pichai made their first appearances at China’s World Internet Conference (WIC), bringing star power to a gathering the Chinese government uses to promote its strategy of tight controls online.
Yusuke Mitsumoto had a hunch: What if you paid people instantly for their used goods over the Internet, with no guarantee that they would hand them over?
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) revealed that it’s in talks with South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co. about a partnership to develop hydrogen engines.
Quants blended with cryptocurrency sounds like a cocktail poured in hell. But behind closed doors, a few intrepid souls in the investing world are starting to drink it.
Jack Ma, who launched China’s largest e-commerce company two decades ago and rode it to a $47.6-billion fortune, turns out to have created billions of dollars of wealth for at least 10 others—a total of almost $100 billion.
The countdown to the January adoption of a new set of regulations for Europe’s financial markets has started. But in Denmark, it’s still raising some fundamental questions.
Political turmoil in Australia risks undermining fragile economic confidence as the loss of another lawmaker in the dual-citizenship fiasco left Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull leading a minority government.
Iceland’s housing market has soared 56 percent since its 2009 crash.
After one of the worst Atlantic hurricane seasons in history, the world’s biggest insurers say the industry needs to get its act together if it wants to survive climate change.
Saudi Arabia has thrown investors a curve ball.
Nigerian officials are increasingly confident the naira’s troubles are over for good. Some investors disagree.
A pit stop on a Norwegian highway in the middle of fields between Oslo and the Olympics town of Lillehammer will soon offer a glimpse of the future for the global gas station industry.
Qatar Airways Ltd. agreed to acquire a stake in Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., a deal that would help it gain a foothold in the world’s second-biggest aviation market.
INVESTORS in Chinese company bonds have so far avoided the brunt of a debt sell-off that’s driven 10-year sovereign yields to the highest in three years. Their luck may be about to run out.
By Enda Curran / Bloomberg
By Zulfugar Agayev / Bloomberg
By Jack Farchy & Mark Burton / Bloomberg
By Jessica Summers / Bloomberg
By David Fickling / Bloomberg
Five years after starting an interest rate-rigging probe, Australia’s financial regulator is poised for a court showdown with three of the nation’s biggest banks.
HONG KONG—It wasn’t just the dark-suited delegates in Beijing who were listening intently last week, as Chinese President Xi Jinping outlined his grand ambitions to launch a twice-a-decade Communist Party congress.
President Emmanuel Macron’s effort to scrap France’s wealth tax is overshadowing other government policies as opponents portray him as an “anti-Robin Hood” who is taking from the poor to give to the rich.
RIO DE JANEIRO—When Leticia Miranda had a job selling newspapers on the streets, she earned about $160 a month, just enough to pay for a tiny apartment she shared with her 8-year-old son in a poor neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro.
Singapore plans to develop solar power and energy-storage technologies as the oil-trading hub of Asia pushes to generate more of its power from renewable sources.
Indians pouring record amounts of their savings into a stock-market rally risk getting burned.
To understand the implications of Brexit, it helps to go nuclear.
IN pockets of China’s industrial heartland, a government push to clean up the environment and cut excess output is starting to bite: Furnaces have gone cold, the lights have been switched off, migrant workers are drifting back home.
Japan’s corporate enfant terrible Takafumi Horie built one of the country’s most successful Internet businesses, stood for parliament, went to prison and started a space company that aims to put the country’s first privately funded rocket into orbit. Now he has a new frontier: cattle.
By Kitty Donaldson / Bloomberg
By Jill Ward | Bloomberg
By Saritha Rai | Bloomberg
By Liz Capo McCormick | Bloomberg
For 30 years China has recycled more cardboard boxes, plastic bottles and old computers than any other nation. By doing so, it has saved millions of tons of resources and indirectly funded thousands of recycling programs and companies globally. But now it wants to stop.
For decades, Chinese patients have struggled to gain access to cutting-edge medicines thanks to bureaucratic delays that have hamstrung drug development. Now a sweeping government overhaul of drug approvals is poised to change that.
The Democratic Republic of Congo ordered Sinohydro Corp. and China Railway Construction Corp.’s local mining venture to stop exporting unprocessed copper and cobalt and refine all its metals within the country.
Contemporary African art is so hot that it now has its first major museum—in Africa.
One of the most influential technological revolutions began with an unsuccessful offer.
Building a machine to construct high-end Prada sweaters was just the start.
Economists are famously bad at predicting growth. A new technique might help them get a little better.
LAST Tuesday Twitter announced that a select group of users would be able to send 280-character tweets—double the platform’s signature 140-character limit. It’s part of an experiment testing whether longer character limits would be better for everyone. The company explained that, in languages where a single character carries more meaning—Chinese, Japanese and Korean—they see “more people tweeting—which is awesome!”
With the British prime minister calling London’s refusal to extend Uber’s license “disproportionate”, and Uber’s chief executive heading to London to talk to regulators, a compromise is on the offing. But it shouldn’t give Uber a false sense of security: Isolated regulatory demands are not its biggest problem.
The death this week of L’Oreal SA’s founding family matriarch is putting the spotlight on a reclusive 64-year-old heiress who now finds herself as the richest woman in the world.
Emerging-market stocks are quietly having a huge year. Through mid-September, the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF, known as EEM, is up more than 31 percent, outpacing gains in both US and foreign developed markets, which are up 13 percent and 19 percent, respectively.
Last week the Commercial Aviation Corp. of China Ltd. (Comac) announced that the C919, China’s first homemade large passenger jet, had chalked up its 730th preorder. Those numbers won’t necessarily make the Boeing Co. or Airbus SE quake; Boeing estimates Chinese airlines alone will require 5,420 new single-aisle planes by 2036. Ultimately, though, they could herald the end of global aviation’s great duopoly.
No one knows how North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will respond to growing pressure on his regime, other than by scouring the thesaurus. But the US and China seem to be stumbling toward a more effective strategy for confronting him. More boldness from the latter, and restraint from the former, will be necessary to see it through.
