The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia intends to invest $1 billion in Virgin Group space companies, according to billionaire Richard Branson’s conglomerate on Thursday. The contract is described as a “partnership on spaceflight, satellite launch and space-centric entertainment,” backed by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. The venture will fuel three Virgin companies – Virgin […]
Read moreLike pretty much every big personnel call in this White House, President Donald Trump has turned his selection of a Federal Reserve chair into a version of “The Bachelor” with everyone feverishly guessing who will get the role of leading the world’s most important central bank. Trump has gone so far as to solicit advice […]
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SWEDES discuss their incomes with a frankness that would horrify Britons or Americans. They have little reason to be coy; in Sweden you can learn a stranger’s salary simply by ringing the tax authorities and asking. Pay transparency can be a potent weapon against persistent inequities. When hackers published e-mails from executives at Sony Pictures, […]
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THE president’s tax promise has always been clear: he will reduce the amount middle-earners, but not rich Americans, must pay. Yet every time Donald Trump releases a plan, analysts say it does almost the opposite. The Tax Policy Centre, a think-tank, recently filled in the blanks in the latest Republican tax proposals and concluded that […]
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ALL men are created equal, but they do not stay that way for long. That is one message of a report this month by the OECD, a club of 35 mostly rich democracies. Many studies show how income gaps have evolved over time or between countries. The OECD’s report looks instead at how inequality evolves […]
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EXCHANGE-TRADED funds (ETFs) were supposed to make investing easy. Instead of spending hours researching individual stocks and bonds or paying an expert fund manager, investors could simply buy a few ETFs. But now there are too many to choose from. BlackRock offers 346 in America alone. Some investors need help allocating their money between different […]
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THE MBA is both revered and reviled. To boosters it has advanced the science of management and helped firms, and countries, to grow. Detractors say it offers little of practical value and instils in students a sense of infallibility that can sink companies, and knock economies sideways. The critics are currently the louder of the […]
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ONE of the perks of owning a bank is the ability to tap it when you need money. The Indian government, which has majority stakes in 21 lenders, is no exception. As it happens, it needs to finance a bail-out of the banks it owns, most of which are in trouble. So under a cunning […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] Past … SOMETIMES it feels like the 1970s in the New York Times and Washington Post newsrooms: reporters battling each other to break news about scandals that threaten to envelop the White House and the presidency of Donald Trump. Only now their scoops come not in the morning edition but […]
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A TELEVISION advertisement for Monte dei Paschi di Siena begins with a toddler tumbling and a gymnast stumbling. “Falling is the first thing we learn,” declares the voice-over. “The second is getting up again.” Italy’s fourth-biggest bank and the world’s oldest, which was bailed out by the Italian government in July, has had several bruising […]
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