The latest news leaked out of China’s troubled HNA Group is not good. Management has asked its employees to hand their paychecks over, with promises of big returns down the road. It is a pretty safe assumption that any company willing to try such a scheme is tottering on the edge of the financial abyss.　HNA’s woes present China’s leadership with a serious conundrum. The airline company has been one of the country’s highest-profile global dealmakers, investing in everything from Hilton Worldwide

China’s biggest tech companies are emblems of national pride. When the government decides upon a priority, Tencent, Alibaba Group and Baidu are often asked to help devise the technology to achieve it. The companies are generally spared from official criticism, let alone interference with their commercial operations.　Those privileges aren’t absolute, however, as Tencent -- the company behind the WeChat messaging app -- recently learned. Late last month, China’s central bank shut down Tencent’s fl

The World Bank declares that its mission is to end extreme poverty within a generation and to boost shared prosperity. These goals are universally agreed as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. But the World Bank lacks an SDG strategy, and now it is turning to Wall Street to please its political masters in Washington. The Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, should find a better way forward, and he can do so by revisiting one of his own great successes.Kim and I worked closely together from 200

It wasn’t long ago that Matteo Renzi was the King Midas of Italian politics. At just 39, he rose from being mayor of Florence to becoming Italy’s youngest-ever prime minister. Such was his popularity that in the 2014 elections for the European Parliament, he secured the largest vote share ever gained by a left-of-center party in Italy. Many international leaders fell for his mixture of charisma and bravado: Barack Obama chose him as guest of honor for his final state dinner at the White House, s

Consider the disaster of American foreign policy under President Donald Trump. While the president spent his first year in office trading insults with the dictator of North Korea, that country has moved steadily forward with its nuclear program, and the United States has moved steadily closer to a war that no one wants.In Syria last April, US forces attacked government installations with a one-time bombing raid that, with no political or diplomatic follow-through, achieved nothing. Similarly, af

The next governor of the People’s Bank of China has a broader, more conceptual inbox than is typical of incoming central bankers.　Zhou Xiaochuan has held the post since 2002 and has hinted that retirement is coming. Zhou helped transform the bank from a fairly obscure bureaucratic outpost in the economic world to a place with a growing international profile that’s increasingly transparent -- compared with when he arrived -- even if it still has a great deal of work to do. 　The next leader will h

On Monday afternoon, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Steve Wynn, the chairman and chief executive of Wynn Resorts, had hidden a $7.5 million payment to “a woman who accused the casino mogul of forcing her to have sex.” It was the latest in a 10-day string of revelations about Wynn’s sexual behavior, going back decades, that has left him bruised in the press yet still in control of his empire.　About an hour and a half later, Lululemon Athletica announced that Chief Executive Laurent P

“Build a wall and my generation will tear it down,” read a sign held by a young anti-Trump protester at a recent rally, a cry reiterated by Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III in his response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. That sentiment could serve as a slogan for millennials, now in their 20s and early 30s, who are well placed to serve as a bridge between the older adult population and the Americans who are now in their teenage years or younger.　One major fault line in our divi

The verdict is in: Food deserts don’t drive nutritional disparities in the United States the way we thought. Over the last decade, study after study has shown that differences in access to healthful food can’t fully explain why wealthy Americans consume a more healthful diet than poor Americans.　If food deserts aren’t to blame, then what is?　I’ve spent the better part of a decade working to answer this question. I interviewed 73 California families -- more than 150 parents and kids -- and spent