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Hong Kong Exchange & Clearing has paid £1.4 billion for the London Metal Exchange, a company which makes £11.2 million operating profit—a multiple of more than 124 times. Even Facebook only managed a multiple of 76 times when it floated, and look what's happened to that. Clearly HKEx is desperate to buy LME, which is very good at what it does, and has basically agreed to pay any price necessary. Why? On a mundane level, of no concern to you or me, it can now ramp up the fees it charges investment banks and the like to become members of...

Last week’s bid by the Hong Kong Exchanges (HKE) for the London Metal Exchange (LME) flew under the radar, but its underlying importance is paramount. In the most expensive bid ever for an exchange, HKE is looking to acquire the world’s largest metals market place for more than $2 billion, shifting the global hub for metals trading to the East.Furthermore, as China gradually becomes the world’s most important player in the gold and commodities markets, it will strengthen its grasp on the global gold trade, which it set out to do in its latest Five Year Plan. As the world...

There are ways to reduce the threat to stability that an emerging superpower poses NO MATTER how often China has emphasised the idea of a peaceful rise, the pace and nature of its military modernisation inevitably cause alarm. As America and the big European powers reduce their defence spending, China looks likely to maintain the past decade’s increases of about 12% a year. Even though its defence budget is less than a quarter the size of America’s today, China’s generals are ambitious. The country is on course to become the world’s largest military spender in just 20 years or so...