Breakingviews

Six steps to Alibaba’s twelve-figure valuation

By Peter Thal Larsen 

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

How do you value a tech company? What about a dominant, fast-growing, profitable tech company with no peers that operates in an opaque economy? Fund managers need to decide as Alibaba kicks off the roadshow for its long-awaited initial public offering. Breakingviews offers a six-step guide to sizing up China’s biggest e-commerce group.

Gold’s geopolitical ledge won’t hold up

By Ian Campbell

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

The Ukrainian crisis and Middle Eastern conflict have provided a respite for the price of gold. After going over a cliff and dropping from heights of $1,700 an ounce during 2013, it has found a ledge at around $1,300. The ledge is eroding.

Democracy snub leaves Hong Kong only bad choices

By Peter Thal Larsen

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Hong Kong’s narrowing options over future leadership elections could have broad repercussions. Voters in the former colony face only bad choices after Beijing proposed a tightly controlled system for choosing its chief executive. The decision escalates the risk of a showdown with protestors. It also suggests China’s leaders care ever less about the rest of the world’s opinion.

TV broadcasters missing big picture in Aereo fight

By Reynolds Holding

The author is a Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Television broadcasters are missing the big picture in their courtroom spat with Aereo. CBS, Disney-owned ABC and others don’t want the streaming startup backed by media mogul Barry Diller reborn as a cable company. But conceding now could put online services and the likes of Time Warner Cable on equal legal footing, creating more competition – and higher fees – for content.

Aereo seemed doomed only two months ago. The U.S. Supreme Court decided it violated copyright law by leasing to each subscriber a dime-sized antenna that received broadcasting signals for free and streamed them over the internet. Like a cable operator, the court ruled, it had to pay for programming.

Review: A pained call for radical financial reform

By Edward Hadas

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

Martin Wolf is still recovering from the financial crisis. In his new book, the Financial Times economics commentator admits to being surprised at the depth, breadth and length of the economic malaise which followed the near collapse of the global financial system in 2008.

Global poverty needs a post-industrial definition

By Andy Mukherjee

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. 

Global poverty needs a new, post-industrial definition.

The $1-a-day threshold, the most-often cited marker of penury, is an anachronistic legacy from the time when being able to fill a human stomach could be reasonably equated with putting raw manpower to productive use in farms, factories and on construction sites.

Bland Lagarde will escape the Bretton Woods curse

By Christopher Swann

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Christine Lagarde may soon reap the benefits of being bland. The IMF chief is under investigation for signing off on a 403 million euro ($531 million) payout to a French tycoon when she served as the country’s finance minister. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, her predecessor at the Washington-based lender, and former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz were both ousted for misconduct. Lagarde, though, has few enemies.

Tragedy may reshape Brazil economy, not just vote

By Martin Hutchinson and Richard Beales

The authors are Breakingviews columnists. All opinions expressed are their own. 

Add Marina Silva to the challenges facing Dilma Rousseff. Brazil’s president faces a new opposition candidate in October’s election after Eduardo Campos’ death in a plane crash, and Silva looks a far bigger threat. If she ousts Rousseff, which polls show is possible, Brazil could gain economically from less state meddling.

Aggressive M&A puts focus on Thai tycoon’s empire

By Una Galani

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi’s appetite for deals has put his sprawling empire in focus. The Thai drinks-to-property tycoon is eyeing more acquisitions on top of the $3.3 billion his companies have spent this year. Investors have already given a poor reception to his most recent deals. A pick’n’mix approach to public markets may explain some of their doubts.

France’s housing slump is sign of deeper woes

By Pierre Briançon

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

François Hollande could live with a housing bubble. That would at least signal euphoria in a significant part of the French economy. But house prices are declining, a reflection of the depth of the country’s economic woes, and its president’s inability to address them.