Features

Breakdown: Shanghai stock venue shows promise

18 March 2019

After multiple Chinese trading-experiment flops, a new board for fast-growing tech and biotech startups looks more auspicious. Its rules strike a balance between liberalisation and discipline. The approach could improve mainland markets at the expense of New York and Hong Kong.

Review: UK soccer’s crunching financial challenge

15 March 2019

After decades of exponential growth, the Premier League is leaderless and faces stagnant TV income at home. “The Club” shows how it became the world’s most popular sports league and gives clues as to what’s next. Wealthy owners may take top teams even further away from home fans.

Insurers’ deathly jackpot may yet backfire

15 March 2019

A sixth of 2018 operating profit came from UK insurers tweaking their mortality assumptions. Ghoulishly, that’s because customers are dying sooner, meaning lower required pensions payments. The problem for investors is that this handy boost could easily go into reverse.

Brexit tips Ireland into economic purgatory

11 March 2019

Ten years after a devastating recession, the Emerald Isle is buoyant again. Banks fleeing London jostle with tech firms for Dublin office space. But the risk of a disorderly Brexit is hurting investment and confidence across the Irish Sea – and fuelling fears of renewed violence.

Review: Gig-economy firms tread precarious path

8 March 2019

The likes of Uber tapped casualised labour to become global giants. They have created a “precariat” class of workers, open to exploitation and abuse. Colin Crouch’s “Will the Gig Economy Prevail?” offers a manifesto for a benign alternative, but underplays technological shifts.

Review: Capitalism and democracy are good friends

1 March 2019

“Democracy and Prosperity” persuasively argues that markets and shifting electoral balances have worked well together to support economic growth. Its two professor authors don’t think the new “populism” needs to break the pattern. Sadly, that case is much less compelling.

Europe is better off policing than banning Huawei

1 March 2019

The Chinese supplier dominated this year’s telecom gathering in Barcelona. U.S. officials want the EU to follow their lead by banning Huawei, while the company denied its kit has security “back doors”. An industry proposal for Europe-wide testing seems a sensible compromise.

Breakdown: End of Moore’s law reshapes chip market

26 February 2019

For decades, raw computing power increased and became cheaper at a heady pace. The death of the trend means chip producers seeking an edge must specialize or find more difficult advances. One result will be a more fragmented industry. Intel and others have their work cut out.

Investment banks have a problem with volatility

25 February 2019

For years bankers complained markets were too calm. But when stocks and bonds tumbled in the fourth quarter, most trading units suffered. Nervous investors and companies are partly to blame, as are models that push up capital demands. It doesn’t bode well if markets stay choppy.

Review: Old news guard beats back the grim reaper

22 February 2019

Google and Facebook have nearly destroyed the media business – venerable institutions and digital upstarts alike. In “Merchants of Truth,” Jill Abramson effectively draws upon BuzzFeed, Vice, the Washington Post and the New York Times to show that subscribers are key to survival.