As companies put their donations to candidates on hold, they should reassess political giving entirely, making the halt permanent. As companies from Coca-Cola to Amazon to Citigroup appear to be tripping over one another to declare that they are “pausing” or “reassessing” donations to Republicans who sought to overturn the election — and, in ...

Between the lines of “You can bet on America” were warnings not to be overconfident in predicting what the future might hold. You could always count on the folksy and cheery optimism of Warren Buffett. But if you listened closely to Mr. Buffett over the weekend during Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders’ meeting — his annual “Woodstock ...

In 2008, policymakers rescued the economy but raised a divisive debate about the fairness of using tax dollars to save companies. Get ready for a repeat. Bailouts. Stimulus. Corporate socialism. Welfare for business. We’ll be hearing a lot about the idea of plowing taxpayer money into the economy as the damage — human and economic — from ...

DAVOS, Switzerland — C.E.O.s have come to accept the president, in spite of his populist views and governance-by-Twitter style. Tax cuts and a record stock market speak volumes. The last time President Trump arrived at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, his trip was treated with deep skepticism, if not disdain, by the business ...

Clawbacks are coming to corporate America.After the financial crisis, regulators forced Wall Street to adopt programs to be able to "claw back" — or recover — compensation that had been paid to bankers or traders if deals they were involved in soured later. The idea was that traders would be more responsible if they knew they would have to ...

For years, critics of the bailouts during the financial crisis argued that the rescue efforts weren't harsh enough. The chief executives of failing institutions should have lost their jobs. Shareholders should have suffered more pain. Taxpayers should have received substantial compensation for the risk they took.All that did come to pass in ...

Earlier this year, a 22-year-old first-year analyst at the Goldman Sachs office in San Francisco was feeling overwhelmed by the all-nighters and 100-hour workweeks.The analyst, Sarvshreshth Gupta, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania who was born in New Delhi, told his father, Sunil, "This job is not for me. Too much work and too ...

"Money-shufflers don't come cheap."That was Warren E. Buffett's latest salvo against Wall Street from his annual letter to shareholders published over the weekend.Mr. Buffett has long ridiculed the financial industry, but this year's letter, laced with references to bankers, lawyers and consultants as "a lot of mouths with expensive ...

Last week, a federal judge handed down a major ruling against American Express, deciding that the brand-name card issuer had engaged in anticompetitive practices for more than a decade.The court ruled that a part of American Express' contract with merchants known as a "nondiscrimination provision" had led to less competition, not more, and ...

Indra K. Nooyi. Marissa Mayer. Ellen J. Kullman. Irene B. Rosenfeld. Meg Whitman. Mary T. Barra.
What do these women have in common? They are the chief executives of some of the nation's largest companies: PepsiCo, Yahoo, DuPont, Mondelez, Hewlett-Packard and General Motors. But they also share something else. In recent years their companies ...

Despite an improving economy and jobs picture, the public is more pessimistic than it was after the 2008 financial crisis that it is possible to work hard and become rich, according to a New York Times poll.
The poll, which explored Americans' opinions on a wide range of economic and financial issues, found that only 64 percent of respondents ...

"It's very seldom that publishing compensation accomplishes much for the shareholders. No C.E.O. looks at a proxy statement and comes away saying, 'I should be paid less.' "
Warren Buffett made that contrarian argument earlier this year, at the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, about the steady push for companies to disclose compensation ...

"Hillary said what?"
That was the question whispered among some of Wall Street's most prominent Democratic supporters over the weekend after Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke on the campaign trail for Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts.
"Don't let anybody tell you that it's corporations and businesses that ...

Goldman Sachs has an office in Moscow. So do Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, too.
Russia was supposed to be a growth market for Wall Street. It is quickly turning out to be a potential financial nightmare and a political hot potato.
With the deteriorating relationship between the United States ...

Michael R. Bloomberg has decided to reassume the leadership of his business empire only eight months after ending his final term as mayor of New York.Late Wednesday, Mr. Bloomberg told close confidants and senior executives of Bloomberg L.P., a financial data and media company, that Daniel L. Doctoroff, its chief executive and a longtime ...

For years, chief executives have complained bitterly about the United States corporate tax code, arguing that it is too complicated and that rates are too high. The issue has reached a near boiling point this summer as many large American companies have sought to buy smaller foreign rivals so they can renounce their United States ...

Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, recently said, “I love America.” Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, wrote an opinion article saying, “Investing in America still produces the best return.”

Yet guess who’s behind the recent spate of merger deals in which major United States corporations have renounced their citizenship in search of a lower tax bill? Wall Street banks, led by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. ...

There is often a tip. Before many big mergers and acquisitions, word leaks out to select investors who seek to covertly trade on the information. Stocks and options move in unusual ways that aren’t immediately clear. Then news of the deals crosses the ticker, surprising everyone except for those already in the know. Sometimes the investor is ...

Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive, Ian C. Read, is in London this week trying to sell a skeptical public there on his $106 billion takeover plan for rival AstraZeneca. On Tuesday, he is scheduled to testify to a parliamentary committee about a deal that has been described in the British tabloids as “too dangerous” and has raised a bevy ...

It’s Tax Day. That means accountants across the country are working furiously to meet the midnight deadline for submitting individual returns.
In corporate America, however, many accountants are already done. The deadline for corporate returns this year was March 17, though companies could seek a six-month extension.
While individuals have ...

“The United States stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism, is rigged.”

That’s what Michael Lewis told Steve Kroft on the CBS show “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening. It was a clever, if hyperbolic, way for Mr. Lewis to describe the topic of his important new book, “Flash Boys,” a make-your-blood-boil read about the abusive way that high-frequency ...

The annual parade of boldface names at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is always striking. This year’s attendees at the meeting, which begins Wednesday, will include Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe; the billionaire Bill Gates; JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon; and the movie star-philanthropist ...

Ahem. Please find your seats.

It is time again for DealBook’s annual “Closing Dinner,” at which we toast and roast the world of finance and corporations — and look back at the year that was. ...

Wall Street’s senior executives have been holed up in conference rooms across Manhattan the last couple of weeks, locked in tense all-day sessions. The special project: dividing up this year’s spoils as bonus season approaches.

Over the last month or two, headlines have speculated that 2013 will turn out to be an excellent one on Wall Street. ...

How can bitcoin be anything but a passing fad? It seems you can’t open a newspaper or read a website these days without hearing about the super-yet-mysterious virtual currency known as bitcoin.

Everyone’s talking about it. Richard Branson just began accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for flights on Virgin Galactic, which offers commercial spaceflights. The Chinese website Baidu endorsed the currency, and lawmakers in Washington are holding hearings about it. ...

Here’s a brainteaser: Would you invest $10,000 in a mutual fund without knowing its past performance? Probably not. Yet, if you were in charge of $13 trillion of pension money, would you accept the recommendation of an investment consultant without knowing its performance record? The answer is yes. It happens ...

Let’s play a game. It is called “What if … .”

As we observe the five-year anniversary of the financial crisis — Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy five years ago this coming weekend — the most intriguing hypothetical question about those fateful days is what would have happened had the government bailed out Lehman. ...

“There was such a total lack of awareness from the firms that paid big bonuses during this extraordinary time.”

That is what Henry M. Paulson Jr., former Treasury secretary, said last week. We were discussing the 2008 financial crisis in light of the approaching five-year anniversary of those white-knuckled days, when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the government stepped in to bail ...

Ethics. Values. Integrity.

Wall Street firms spend a lot of time using those catchwords when talking about developing the right culture. Bank chief executives often discuss how much effort they devote to instilling a sense of integrity at their institutions. The firms all have painstakingly written ...

An American hedge fund billionaire known for starting big fights has called for a breakup of the entertainment and electronics colossus Sony, according to people briefed on the matter, possibly setting off a battle that could roil Japan’s famously staid corporate culture.

The call, which came on Tuesday, will most likely be viewed by government officials and corporate leaders in Tokyo as a shot across the bow from Wall Street, just as Western investors begin piling into Japanese stocks. ...

“You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo.”

That’s what President Obama said about his pick to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Jo White. The nomination of Ms. White, a former prosecutor who took on the terrorists behind the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Mafia boss John Gotti, was ...