Car-rental company Hertz Global Holdings Inc. said it plans to relist on a major stock exchange by the end of 2021 as its quarterly revenue surged amid a travel rebound.

For April through June, Hertz posted sales of $1.87 billion, growth of 62% compared with the first three months of the year. Sales remained significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels but marked a substantial recovery compared with last year’s spring quarter, when the pandemic brought much of leisure and business travel to a halt.

As vaccination campaigns helped ease the pandemic in the first half of this year, more people hit the road again. Meanwhile, automotive production challenges have squeezed all corners of the car market, raising prices for used cars and keeping rental fleets tight. For Hertz, demand has been resurgent and slim car-rental inventories industrywide boosted the company’s results, Chief Executive Paul Stone said.

“The rental-car industry was among the first to see...

BEIJING—China’s factory-gate prices rose at an unexpectedly fast clip in July, matching the highest level in more than 12 years as crude oil and coal prices soared—though economists say the price pickup is unlikely to last.

China’s producer-price index rose 9.0% from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said Monday—faster than June’s 8.8% year-over-year increase and the 8.8% gain forecast by economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.

July’s increase matched May’s 9.0% year-over-year jump, which marked the biggest surge in producer prices since September 2008.

On a month-over-month basis, China’s producer prices rose 0.5% in July, faster than June’s 0.3% advance.

The price increases came despite measures taken by Beijing in recent months to cool soaring commodity prices, including restricting steel exports and cracking down on speculative behavior.

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. is planning to make a new, increased offer for Kansas City Southern , according to people familiar with the matter, reigniting a takeover battle with Canadian National Railway Co. for the U.S. railroad.

Canadian Pacific’s board of directors met Monday to authorize a bid that values Kansas City Southern near $300 per share, the people said, or about $27 billion. There is no guarantee Canadian Pacific will follow through with the plan; if it does, it is expected to do so soon.

Canadian Pacific had clinched a cash-and-stock deal with Kansas City Southern valued at around $275 per share, or $25 billion. Kansas City Southern later agreed to a sale to Canadian National instead after CN offered about $30 billion (then worth around $320 a share) and Canadian Pacific declined to raise its offer.

Kansas City Southern shares traded Monday at around $269.60 apiece.

Canadian Pacific could be motivated to submit a new bid ahead...

Electric delivery truck maker Workhorse Group Inc. said Monday it sold down much of its stake in Lordstown Motors Corp. this summer, reducing its equity position in the embattled Ohio-based startup.

Workhorse, in a company filing, said it had sold 11.9 million shares in Lordstown Motors since July 1, reducing its 9% stake by nearly three-quarters. Workhorse, also based in Ohio, was an early investor in Lordstown Motors, which was established in 2019 by Workhorse founder and former chief executive Steve Burns, an entrepreneur who had previously begun tech and marketing companies.

The divestiture comes ahead of Lordstown Motors’ planned electric-truck launch in September. The startup is cash-strapped and trying to raise additional capital to ensure its survival.

Starting production of Lordstown Motors’ debut pickup truck, the Endurance, is a crucial target for the startup, which went public last fall through a reverse merger with a special-purpose...

Brett Redfearn, a former federal regulator who joined Coinbase Global Inc. earlier this year, has left the cryptocurrency exchange after about four months on the job.

Mr. Redfearn had been head of Coinbase’s capital-markets group. He resigned from the company at the end of July. A Coinbase spokesman confirmed the departure, which hasn’t been previously reported.

Coinbase is the largest U.S. crypto exchange. It has played a major role in popularizing digital currencies, with over 56 million users.

Mr. Redfearn, a former official at the Securities and Exchange Commission, left the firm after Coinbase decided to shift its priorities away from digital-asset securities, people familiar with the matter said. He had been one of the company’s highest-profile hires this year.

Digital-asset securities are crypto tokens that fall within the legal definition of securities under U.S. law, like traditional stocks and bonds, and unlike bitcoin, which regulators...

Shared office space giant WeWork and Cushman & Wakefield PLC, one of the world’s largest commercial real-estate firms, are negotiating to form a $150 million partnership to navigate the new world of remote working and flexible workplaces.

As part of the alliance, Cushman would make a $150 million investment in the planned merger between WeWork and a public company later this year. That merger, expected to value WeWork at $9 billion including debt, will cap off the firm’s effort to reconstruct its balance sheet following the high-profile collapse of its planned initial public offering in late 2019.

The deal with Cushman comes as office-building owners and tenants are struggling to plan for returning tens of millions of employees to downtowns and suburban office parks after some 18 months of working from home. Many thought that Labor Day would be a major turning point. But concerns about vaccination rates and variants of the Covid-19 virus have forced many...

Everyone knows dieting is hard and that it’s easier if you have someone to do it with you. Europe has already committed to much lower carbon-dioxide emissions by 2030, and it is hoping the rest of the world will join in—particularly China, the world’s largest emitter.

The bloc’s newly proposed carbon border-adjustment mechanism—essentially a tax on energy-intensive products from countries with lower carbon prices than Europe—is one key cudgel in this effort. In its current form, the CBAM probably isn’t enough to force big changes on China, but it certainly would impose costs on key industries such as steel trying to access the European market.

And tweaks to the mechanism, such as including scope 2 emissions—carbon indirectly released due to electricity purchased by manufacturers—would increase the impact. That is because China still relies on coal for about 70% of its power, far more than the world’s other largest economies, excluding fellow Asian heavyweight...

Even as calls to cut carbon-dioxide emissions ring ever louder, Saudi Aramco is mobilizing to pump more oil. The strategy makes sense on its own terms, but isn’t without risk.

On Monday, the U.N. Climate Change Panel’s latest report contained a dramatic call to action: “Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5 [degrees Celsius] or even 2 [degrees Celsius] will be beyond reach.”

A day earlier, the world’s largest oil producer outlined plans to increase its petroleum investments, including increasing its capacity from 12 million barrels a day to 13 million. The growth plan highlights how national oil companies including Aramco are different from independent producers such as Shell , BP and even Exxon Mobil , which are tempering their petroleum investments as they grapple with questions of how to prepare their emissions-heavy businesses for a lower-carbon world.

Although oil...

A little more than a month ago, Zhiwei Ren pared back his bet that strong growth and inflation would cause bond prices to fall and their yields to rise—even though he still believed in his economic forecast.

A fixed-income portfolio manager for Penn Mutual Asset Management, Mr. Ren had positioned his funds since late last year so that they held, in effect, a smaller amount of 10- and 30-year bonds than their benchmark index, leaving them less vulnerable to rising long-term interest rates. This stance paid off when U.S. Treasury yields soared in the first quarter of the year but started to drag on returns in subsequent months, as yields fell sharply and, for many on Wall Street, unexpectedly.

Mr. Ren and his colleagues stuck for a while with their conviction that yields would bounce back but eventually decided to bend to the market tide. Their funds are now still positioned for higher yields but not as aggressively as they were previously.

“It’s not a...

DraftKings Inc. has agreed to buy Golden Nugget Online Gaming Inc. for about $1.56 billion in stock, a deal that would boost the sports-betting operator’s online-casino-games offering, the companies said.

The deal gives DraftKings an existing combined database of more than five million customers, according to the companies. By using the Golden Nugget brand, DraftKings hopes to reach a broader consumer base for online casino games, also known as iGaming, DraftKings Chief Executive Jason Robins said Monday.

Golden Nugget Online Gaming shareholders will get 0.365 shares of DraftKings. The deal is valued at $18.83 a share, a roughly 53% premium over Golden Nugget Online Gaming’s closing price Friday. Shares of Golden Nugget Online Gaming rose about 47% Monday morning, while DraftKings shares were down about 1%.

Tilman Fertitta, Golden Nugget Online Gaming’s CEO who owns about 46% of the company, has agreed to continue holding DraftKings shares to be issued...

Few stocks have been as refreshing during the Covid-19 pandemic as those of Pool Corp.

Rock-bottom interest rates, the work-from-home wave and the continuing exodus to the Sunbelt have led to a boom in residential swimming-pool construction that the wholesaler, with a market value nearing $20 billion, is perfectly situated to serve. Last year saw 96,000 in-ground pools built in the U.S. That was up from 78,000 a year earlier, beating an annual growth record dating back to 1983, according to an industry body, the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance. It might have been greater still if not for supply and labor constraints. About $4.6 billion was spent on construction alone, compared with $3.1 billion a year earlier. The enthusiasm seems to have continued into 2021 despite much higher labor and material costs.

And it wasn’t just new construction. Texas—a state where the company has as many distribution centers as the entire U.S. Northeast and Midwest combined—suffered...

WASHINGTON—An unregulated cryptocurrency exchange whose employees said they wanted to be aggressive about trading digital assets, even though their legal status was uncertain, has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a regulatory investigation.

Poloniex LLC violated investor-protection laws by not registering its operations with federal regulators, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday. The Boston-based company allowed users to trade digital assets that were unregistered securities from 2017 through 2019, the SEC alleged.

Poloniex agreed to settle the SEC’s investigation without admitting or denying the claims. An attorney for the company and a spokesman for the firm that previously owned it, Circle Internet Financial Ltd., didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment.

The SEC has recently vowed to bring accountability to a crypto sector that Chairman Gary Gensler this month called the “Wild West.” Mr. Gensler said last week that...

After years of declining sales and proximity to scandals, Victoria’s Secret is shedding its supermodel wings and hiking solo. Good news for investors: Its shares don’t seem to have reached peak elevation.

Victoria’s Secret officially started trading as a stand-alone company last Tuesday after its spinoff from L Brands . Its shares have jumped 25% since their trading debut, giving the company a market capitalization of roughly $5 billion. Still, they fetch a modest eight times forward-12-month earnings. That is a sizable discount compared to Hanesbrands and American Eagle Outfitters , which hold the second- and third-largest market share in women’s underwear in North America, according to Euromonitor International. Victoria’s Secret is No. 1.

The brand made two splashy announcements in June, including an activist-filled slate of brand ambassadors in lieu of its scantily clad angels. It also put in place a new seven-member board of directors, six of whom are...

Citigroup Inc. will sell its Australian consumer operations to National Australia Bank Ltd. , the first deal in Chief Executive Jane Fraser’s attempt to remake the global bank’s reach.

NAB, one of the four dominant banks in Australia, will pay Citigroup A$250 million ($184 million) for the book of mortgages, credit cards and deposits, the banks announced.

Ms. Fraser took over Citigroup in March and quickly announced a restructuring that would shed consumer operations in 13 global markets, trying to simplify the bank to focus on a few global hubs. She intends to streamline the sprawling bank further, aiming to boost profits and returns to close the gap with rivals.

Analysts cheered Ms. Fraser’s pledges, but Citigroup’s stock has trailed peers and missed recent rallies as investors awaited tangible steps. Heading into Monday, shares were down 5% in the last three months and up just 15% this year. The latter is only half the gain seen by fellow big banks...

The reinsurance arm of Brookfield Asset Management Inc. has agreed to buy American National Group Inc. for about $5 billion, the companies said.

As part of the deal, American National stockholders will receive $190 a share in cash. That represents a roughly 10% premium to the company’s closing price Friday of $172.80.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that the companies had reached a deal.

Assuming the deal is completed, American National will be wholly owned by Brookfield Asset Management Reinsurance Partners Ltd. , which spun out of the Canadian investment giant in June to become a publicly traded entity. (It is still affiliated with Brookfield Asset Management.) Brookfield said it plans to keep American National’s headquarters in Galveston, Texas, and maintain its operational hubs around the country.

American National, which has just under $30 billion in assets, provides life insurance and annuities as well as health, property and...

Jefferies Financial Group Inc. will match Goldman Sachs Group Inc. at the top of Wall Street’s pay scale for younger bankers, according to people familiar with the matter, in a bid to go head-to-head with better-known rivals.

First-year analysts in the U.S. will now make $110,000, up from $85,000, while second-year analysts will rise to $125,000 from $95,000 and associates, those in their third year, will go to $150,000 from $125,000, the people said. Bonuses, typically handed out in August, are also expected to be high, one of the people added.

The base rates will match the 30% raises Goldman handed out a week ago, which put it as the highest on the Street. Earlier this year JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley all moved their first-year pay up to $100,000 from $85,000.

That Jefferies is climbing above bigger peers is a sign of the widespread nature of Wall Street’s recruiting war.

JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are at the...

The price of oil and other key industrial commodities slid Monday after Chinese government measures to halt the spread of the Delta variant spooked investors about global energy demand.

Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, fell 4% to $67.87 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate futures—the main U.S. benchmark—were down 4.3% at $65.38 a barrel. At those prices, both gauges were set for their lowest close in around 2½ months.

The spread of Delta variant Covid-19 cases has raised alarms in China and other East Asian countries. Beijing health authorities said last week that the city would cancel all large-scale exhibitions and events for the remainder of August.

China is the world’s biggest importer of oil and “while some countries seem to be flipping to learning to live with the coronavirus, it is adopting a zero-tolerance policy” with stricter travel rules and quarantine measures, said Norbert Rücker, head of economics at Swiss private bank Julius Baer ....

Movie-theater operators have the easiest comparisons imaginable this earnings season, but those numbers aren’t saying much.

That already has been borne out by two that have unveiled second-quarter results so far. Cinemark reported Friday that revenue was $294.7 million for the quarter. That was 17% higher than Wall Street’s estimates and more than 3,100% higher than what the company managed in last year’s second quarter, when nearly the entire chain was shut down due to the pandemic. It was also 69% lower than revenue from the second quarter of 2019.

IMAX , which reported results on July 27, showed a similar dynamic, with second-quarter revenue less than half of its pre-pandemic comparison. The same is expected to play out for AMC Entertainment and Cineworld , both slated to report results this week. Analysts expect AMC’s second-quarter revenue to be reported Monday afternoon will be about one-quarter of its 2019 second-quarter showing.

Those results...

U.S. stock futures hovered close to record highs, but a tumble in oil prices and a brief slump in gold and silver prices signaled investor unease about the strength of the economic recovery.

Futures tied to the S&P 500 edged down 0.1% early Monday, pointing to a modest pullback after the broad-market index notched a record on Friday. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures ticked down 0.3%. Nasdaq-100 futures were relatively flat, wavering between small gains and losses.

Global oil benchmark Brent crude dropped 3.7% to $68.07, putting it on track for its lowest settlement price since May. An outbreak of Covid-19 in China renewed concerns about another hit to demand from the virus, traders said. Prices were also weighed down by customs data over the weekend that showed China imported less crude a day in July than in June, analysts said.

Gold and silver briefly tumbled early Monday before recovering much of the lost ground. Analysts attributed the fall...

Canada’s Centerra Gold Inc. invested more than $3 billion over nearly three decades to turn a remote gold prospect in Kyrgyzstan into a prosperous gold mine. Then in May, the mine was taken over by authorities in the former Soviet republic.

Officials from Kyrgyzstan’s secret police arrived at homes of local mine managers to obtain computer passwords, confidential documents and keys to the mine and the head office of Centerra’s wholly owned subsidiary Kumtor Gold Co., people familiar with the matter and court documents said.

Mining and legal experts say the expropriation of one of Central Asia’s largest gold mines—which had accounted for about a tenth of Kyrgyzstan’s economic output—is one of the most brazen moves in recent years by a country to assert control over valuable natural resources.

Centerra is far from the only mining company that has tangled with governments in recent years. Gold or copper mines in Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Mongolia,...

Real-estate investment trusts, often thought of primarily as a way to diversify a portfolio, are playing a starring role this year.

The FTSE Nareit All REITs index—the broadest U.S. REIT index, with a market capitalization of $1.4 trillion—had total a total return, including dividends, of 26.05% this year as of July 31, versus 17.99% for the S&P 500 index.

REITs have benefited from inflation concerns, says Todd Rosenbluth, head of ETF and mutual-fund research at CFRA. Real estate is often considered a hedge against inflation.

Low yields in the bond market are also fueling interest in REITs, Mr. Rosenbluth says. REITs are required to pay out 90% of taxable income to shareholders as dividends. The current average dividend yield for the FTSE Nareit All REITs index is 3%.

Finally, the outlook for residential and commercial real estate for the second half of 2021 as the economy continues to emerge from the pandemic also is supporting REITs, Mr....

Movie-theater operators have the easiest comparisons imaginable this earnings season, but those numbers aren’t saying much.

That already has been borne out by two that have unveiled second-quarter results so far. Cinemark reported Friday that revenue was $294.7 million for the quarter. That was 17% higher than Wall Street’s estimates and more than 3,100% higher than what the company managed in last year’s second quarter, when nearly the entire chain was shut down due to the pandemic. It was also 69% lower than revenue from the second quarter of 2019.

IMAX , which reported results on July 27, showed a similar dynamic, with second-quarter revenue less than half of its pre-pandemic comparison. The same is expected to play out for AMC Entertainment and Cineworld , both slated to report results this week. Analysts expect AMC’s second-quarter revenue to be reported Monday afternoon will be about one-quarter of its 2019 second-quarter showing.

Those results...

On a Sunday evening 50 years ago—on Aug. 15, 1971, to be exact—then-President Nixon interrupted “Bonanza,” one of the most popular TV shows of that era, to announce that he was ending the convertibility of the U.S. dollar into gold. Many consider it to be one of the most consequential decisions he made.

Up until this “closing of the gold window,” foreign central banks had been able to convert U.S. dollars into gold bullion at the fixed price of $35 an ounce. In theory, this had imposed a strict monetary discipline on the Federal Reserve, since inflating the money supply could have caused a run on Fort Knox, where the U.S. stored its supply of gold. And inflation did indeed jump in the years following Nixon’s decision to remove that restraint. So did the price of gold, which today is 50 times as high as it was that day.

This apparent correlation between gold and inflation has led many to believe that gold is a good inflation hedge. This belief isn’t supported...