Alphabet (the company formerly known as Google) reported healthy earnings a few weeks ago. Its revenue reached $21.5 billion, which included $185mm in sales from moonshot projects – investments in everything from driverless cars and solar-powered drones to genomics. But as executives discussed these ventures with investors, a faint echo from an earlier age – […]

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You have to feel some sympathy for UK finance minister George Osborne. Not only is he dealing with a stubbornly weak economy, but his top-secret annual budget presentation to Parliament was spoiled by an errant tweet.  The incident was widely covered and featured plenty of hand-wringing and finger-pointing.  But it’s amazing this sort of blunder […]

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It’s embarrassing anytime a company’s earnings are released accidentally. But when the company is a giant known for its savvy technology skills, well, it’s a calamity.  Amid the morning-after explanations, several questions remain unanswered.

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Perhaps the only thing more surprising than the LIBOR rate-fixing scandal that engulfed Barclays last week is the method by which the rate is set.  For more than four decades, the benchmark interest rate has been set by a group of banks, based on voluntary declarations of each bank’s borrowing cost, not actual trades. But […]

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