The competition-heavy, investment-light approach to the once heavyweight sector has led it to near-extinction. Is the interest of US private equity firm KKR likely to bring one such casualty, Telecom Italia, back from the brink?

Last week’s first meeting between US president Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping did little to reduce the gulf between the two superpowers but there are some reasons to hope that the world can avoid a prolonged conflict

Masayoshi Son’s attempt to reinvigorate his beloved SoftBank by mounting a share buyback is a lame attempt to rouse it out of its own inertia

Notwithstanding the bluster, the current fishing rights row is small potatoes next to the tensions that will arise between Britain and France when checks on imports are imposed at Dover

If Elon Musk’s company does to cars what Amazon did to shopping, then the trillion-dollar valuation may be justified

Dual class shares distort the marketplace, undermine the principles of shareholder capitalism, and lead to bad management

They may have a conservative-nationalist government at present, but at heart the Polish people are strongly pro-European and would surely reject populism and stay in the EU

Can the social media giant’s woes only be fixed by a rearrangement of the power balance at board level?

Empty shelves, drained petrol pumps, rising costs: the consequences of Brexit are biting hard, the British government is in denial, yet Keir Starmer and Labour still cannot capitalise politically

Offending French sensibilities is the least of the consequences of Australia’s new trilateral defence alliance with Britain and the US

Companies buying up their own shares is nothing new in the corporate world, and Apple is merely the latest behemoth to do it, but it remains a controversial practice

The ongoing struggles of beleaguered property giant Evergrande pose a huge threat not just to its own survival, but to the very stability of the Asian superpower’s financial system

The country’s nostalgic regard for its departing chancellor is understandable, but Germany’s challenge now is to move off autopilot and take greater responsibility in an unstable world

Founded in 1472, the Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank has since survived wars, plagues, depressions, popes and the Mafia – only to be brought to its knees by a badly timed takeover

The Chinese Communist Party appears to be becoming increasingly hostile towards its homegrown tech sector, but that approach comes with its own dangers

The Belarus president may have little time left in office, but it is up to the EU to ensure the transition to democracy is a peaceful one

The US’s 20-year occupation of Afghanistan has achieved almost nothing – and as the Taliban reimposes its dictatorship, a humanitarian tragedy is sure to follow

So far, the space missions of Bezos, Branson and Musk lack the poetics, significance or purpose of Aldrin and Armstrong’s, but it’s early days yet

The US president used hearing aids to illustrate anti-competitive business practices as he sought to put a check on the continuing erosion of America’s competitive edge

Post-Brexit, British corporate assets are cheap compared to their international peers, and the FTSE index looks like a relic of a bygone era