Rather than fear the so-called Middle Kingdom, European companies should recognize its rapid ascent as an opportunity.
Tag: business
With its abundant raw materials and growing digital economy, Latin America has real potential for national investment funds.
The growing alarm after UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal suffered a defeat in Parliament isn’t just unsettling for British politics. Global businesses are on edge as well. Asian companies, whose operations and investments stretch far into Britain and the European continent, have a lot at stake as they face higher tariffs and costs. Tuesday’s setback will do little to cure the anxiety. Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has sought to assure business leaders that their no-deal nightmare scenario could still be avoided, but with only 10 weeks left before the UK is due to leave the European […]
WASHINGTON — I loved Amazon when it first appeared. It was the 1990s, and I was living in Italy and then China, two countries that are strongly monolingual with a scarce number of foreign-language bookstores. Rome for instance, with three and a half million inhabitants at the time, had a couple of English bookstores and […]
-OpEd- MUNICH — A business conference will take place next week in Saudi Arabia, dubbed “Davos in the Desert.” It comes at a delicate moment to say the least: Nearly two weeks ago, the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared from a Saudi consulate in Turkey, and is now feared dead. Many have accused the regime […]
Ancestral agricultural practices can provide a sustainable and creative way to boost rural economies in Latin America. And China could help.
-OpEd- MADRID — Since September 2015, when the UN General Assembly launched its 2030 Agenda — a plan to reach 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within 15 years — the concepts have been gaining momentum worldwide. The ultimate purpose of the SDGs is to eradicate poverty, and slowly but surely, people are realizing their importance […]
Proposed changes to the trilateral trade accord could scare off investors, hurt Mexican automakers, and sour relations with Canada, analyst Luis Rubio argues.
Spare a thought for the globe-trotting European stock salesman. Europe’s equities have seen 25 straight weeks of fund outflows, according to Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, wiping out all of 2017’s inflows. It’s the only region recording meaningful outflows this year — even emerging markets, performing far worse, can’t make that claim. So why can’t Europe get any love? The push factors are obvious: From Brexit to the Italian budget, Europe is still a continent that has a reputation for in-fighting for global investors. At the same time, the pull factors are lacking: Economic and earnings growth is decent but unimpressive […]
Rising tariffs between the U.S. and China may boost trade between China and Latin American states, but ultimately this could harm their economies if all China wants is energy and commodities.
PARIS — The French capital was set to be the world capital of science. On May 17-18, no fewer than 50 conferences in the fields of aerospace, mechanics, energy, the environment, civil engineering, economics, computer science, social sciences and chemistry were to be held under the same Parisian roof. On that day, in a hotel […]
By allying themselves commercially, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Peru have created a massive consumer base — just what new, home-grown tech firms need to grow and prosper.
BEIJING — Yang Ke works for a high-tech company in Shenzhen on the southeast coast of China. Thanks to a few years spent abroad, he has saved up a considerable amount of money and is looking to invest it in foreign real estate. After intensive discussions with real estate agents, he decided that property in […]
The ‘sudden stop’ scenario has hit the Turkish economy, which threatens other countries around the world — and not just economically.
-OpEd- PARIS — My conversation partner is a Japanese banker. He has just returned from Amman, the capital of Jordan. And he’s talking about the Chinese who were also there at a joint meeting of the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank). “They were everywhere and everyone […]
When dealing with ‘distant cultures’ like China, communication is key. But a bit of business-is-business pragmatism doesn’t hurt either.
The Silicon Wadi, as Israel’s tech sector is known, has a penchant for creating innovative new companies. But rather than grow to maturity, they’re often sold off early to larger, foreign firms.
With technology rapidly advancing, what may set human workers apart is their ability to reason as much as their technical skills.
With its mineral resources and cheap labor, the country has significant potential for growth, but economic openness could undermine its dictatorship.
Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials have very different needs and expectations regarding workspaces. And yet, in many companies they’re expected to work side-by-side.
Tim Cook’s company is a rock of common sense in an industry that’s gone rogue.
LONDON — The plot to reverse Brexit is missing a key ally: U.K. business. Companies have been among the most outspoken critics of the split from the European Union, and have much to lose from a divorce gone wrong. But as a group of lawmakers tries to engineer a second referendum, business leaders are recoiling. “Business likes certainty and I can’t see how discussion of a second referendum helps create that certainty when the negotiations are not even concluded,” says Miles Celic, chief executive officer of TheCityUK, the finance industry’s lobby group. Businesses are uninterested in politics. They want commercial […]
In Argentina, one of the world’s biggest citrus producers is recycling its farming waste as fuel and fertilizers.
The city in the U.S. midwest has found a different way to make it in the modern economy.
Their close cuts, unusual trims and friendly demeanor have made Dominican barbers a hit in the Argentine capital, after making their name in the U.S. and Europe.
The numbers contradict Donald Trump’s claims that leaving NAFTA will benefit U.S. business and workers. It will harm them, not to mention their Mexican counterparts.
Businesses in Colombia have been invited to display gay-friendly signs as a traditionalist society, slowly, grows more tolerant.
Nondisclosure agreements and other contracts perpetuate a culture of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace.
GENEVA — A high stack of papers dominates the desk of this president of a Swiss soccer club. “These are resumes from players. We get 50 of them every week, together with video cassettes of their feats. Sorting the good from the bad is an enormous task. And when the concerned party finally arrives from […]
More and more Japanese, South Korean and other foreign manufacturers of TCM are not even using Chinese raw materials for the ancient cures. What is left then?
South Korean fried chicken franchises are popping up all over the country. Tight competition is squeezing owners.
MUNICH — At first sight, it looks like a real bargain buy: five disposable razors for 85 cents, with Aloe-Vera sliding strips, “ideal for the bikini line.” No hesitation, the pink razors are in the basket. But wait: Two shelves to the right, there’s what looks like the same kind of package, but in blue. […]
The refrain has continued ever since Donald Trump stunned the world with his election victory: “But what will he actually do?” As the two-plus month interregnum winds down, ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration, some (but not all) of the answers have begun to emerge. The first clear message is that he will nominate whomever […]
PUNTA DEL ESTE — From this Argentine beach resort, it was business as usual this week for the Trump family empire. But the appearance of Eric Trump, the second-born son of the next U.S. President, to promote the family company’s new luxury flats in Argentina was also another flash of the unresolved questions about major […]
-OpEd- KALAMAZOO — People from China who travel abroad are struck by the stark differences between their countries. In the U.S. and Europe, they probably envy how people live in comfort and are rich enough to engage in arts and public service. These countries in general have more honest and transparent governments, as well as […]
While markets have already expressed short-term preferences for the respective U.S. presidential candidates, the long-term impact is harder to gauge.
CHINON — Serge Desazars’ bodyguards are very hairy. Hip-Hop, a two-year-old Springer, jumps whenever a new visitor arrives. Serge lets out a smile, surreptitiously materializing on the unemotional farmer’s face. Hip-Hop is clearly too playful for this former international director for the clothing brands Petit Bateau, Céline and Holland & Holland. Desazars, who abandoned carpeted […]
Organizers of the Olympic Games in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro are taking a novel, fight-fire-with-fire approach to tackle counterfeit merchandise, a local newspaper reports. As is often the case at international sporting events, prices of souvenirs at official stores in Rio are high — a pocket replica of the Olympic torch costs […]
Now that two of the world’s five biggest economies – Germany and Britain – are headed by women, and the biggest one of all, the U.S., has a woman front-runner in its presidential election, the glass ceiling in politics can probably be declared broken, and it’s time to consider what kind of change this brings to the world. The overall statistics of female leadership do not look particularly encouraging. There are fewer women heads of government today than there were last year. Not even 5% of government leaders are women. Yet they are winning where it matters: If there were […]
Le Canard enchaîné first ever and latest front pages France’s legendary satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné is celebrating its century-long existence, and the Internet is not about to write its obituary. “The Chained Duck” — canard is both French for “duck” and the slang for “newspaper,” — was first published on July 5, 1916. On […]