Today, EU and council elections create a political kaleidoscope which could determine the patterns of government in these islands and right across the continent. A tilt to the left or right will determine the colours and contours of our future. At home, we also have the referendum on changing the divorce law. There are also […]

Media coverage of the threat to personal privacy from technology tends to follow a narrative in which privacy is a virtue, Big Tech its evil predator and government the good knight capable of protecting it. But this narrative ignores the realities of modern life and may lead to devastating trade-offs. It fetishizes privacy, demonizes technology […]

Before dawn on Feb. 26, Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist prime minister of India, ordered an aerial attack on the country’s nuclear-armed neighbor, Pakistan. There were thick clouds that morning over the border. But Mr. Modi claimed earlier this month, during his successful campaign for re-election, that he had overruled advisers who worried about them. […]

I was squiring a visitor from Switzerland around Berkeley, Calif., each of us on one of my bicycles. We crossed the U.C. campus on a Saturday — cyclists can ride across the school’s famous Sproul Plaza on weekends — and we breezed past what appeared to be a fair: booths, tents and banners had been […]

(Reuters) – Activist shareholder ValueAct on Thursday urged Merlin Entertainments to go private and said the owner of Madame Tussauds, the London Eye and Alton Towers could be valued at about 4 pounds a share, 20% more than its current price. That would value the Legoland owner at more than 4 billion pounds ($5.06 billion). […]

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean food giant CJ CheilJedang Corp said on Thursday that U.S. private equity fund Bain Capital had agreed to acquire a 27% stake its U.S. unit CJ Foods America for $320 million. Bain would become a financial investor for CJ’s recent acquisition of U.S. frozen foods firm Schwan’s Co for $1.84 […]

Exit polls are predicting a significant win for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India when final results are announced on Thursday. That’s not only good news for Mr. Modi; it’s also good news for his country. While his bold economic policies generated a blizzard of controversy, I came away from a recent trip to India […]

(This version of the May 21st story corrects to say ‘Refinitiv’, not ‘Thomson Reuters’ in last paragraph) (Reuters) – Private equity firms such as Blackstone, Brookfield Asset Management, Mirae Asset Management, and SoftBank-owned Fortress have put in bids of up to $5.8 billion for Anbang Insurance’s portfolio of U.S. luxury hotels business, the Financial Times […]

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Buyout group Lone Star is preparing German residential property developer Isaria for a potential sale or stock market listing in the autumn, hoping to benefit from buoyant real estate valuations, people close to the matter said. The investor, which is working with VictoriaPartners as its adviser, is aiming for a valuation of […]

This article is part of David Leonhardt’s newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it each weekday. President Trump is making Facebook central to his re-election campaign. Trump’s 2020 campaign has spent around $5 million on Facebook ads this year, which is roughly half as much as the 23 Democratic candidates combined have spent, […]