Legislators strike deal on a new standard to fight greenwashing in the bond markets

This article is brought to you in association with the European Parliament. EU negotiators on Tuesday struck a deal creating the first best in class standard for the issuing of green bonds. The “European Green Bonds Standard” (EUGBS), which companies issuing a bond can choose to comply with, will primarily enable investors to orient their investments […]

Emerging markets could hold the key to growth in the face of macroeconomic storms

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum. Author: Barry O’Byrne, Chief Executive Officer, Global Commercial Banking, HSBC Businesses everywhere are facing a combination of domestic recessions, rising interest rates, high inflation and geopolitical uncertainty. Rarely do so many volatile business conditions descend at once on the world. […]

Here’s why developed economies must bear the $100 trillion cost of the net-zero transition in emerging markets

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum. Author: Charlotte Edmond, Senior Writer, Formative Content Standard Chartered estimates emerging economies need around $94.8 trillion of investment to allow them to meet net-zero targets while continuing to grow and prosper. If developing markets bear this cost alone, the […]

Markets can accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum. Author: Mario Greco, Chief Executive Officer, Zurich Insurance Group Prices shape the behaviours of individuals and companies alike. Insurers are incentivizing customers to tackle climate change. A carbon tax would encourage users to put less of it into the […]

Trump after marginalizing G20 attacks Europe and China where it hurts, brandishes currency war

Last week’s G20 meeting in Osaka confirmed that the forum’s commonly shared concern about our future on the planet is definitively a thing of the past. Last week, the cacophony at the table of the 20 heads of the largest countries of the world – which first appeared last December in Buenos Aires – became […]

How banks should prepare for robots going rogue

This article is brought to you thanks to the strategic cooperation of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum. Author: Elizabeth St-Onge, Partner, Financial Services, Oliver Wyman & Ege Gürdeniz, Principal, Digital, Technology, and Analytics, Oliver Wyman Banks are rolling out machine-learning applications to handle all manner of tasks once reserved for humans, from customer service to automated […]

US-China trade war at point of no return: Washington’s demands go beyond tariffs

It seems the US-China trade conflict, if not full scale trade war, is entering the phase of no return. Nothing will be as before in the economic and otherwise relations between the two largest economies of the world. Washington appears ready to push its cause to the end, while Beijing still pretends not to understand […]

Mario Draghi didn’t do it but Kim Jong-un did

Last Thursday, Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank, was unable to move the capital and money markets with his customary monetary policy Press conference in Frankfurt am Main. On the contrary, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, a global castoff, did it the next day just by pressing a button. However, it took […]

Deutsche Bank: the next financial crisis is here and the lenders need €150 billion from taxpayers

Last Monday David Folkerts-Landau, the chief economist of Deutsche Bank, the ailing largest lender of Germany, in an interview with the prestigious newspaper ‘Die Welt’ stated that European banks must be subsidized with €150 billion in rescue money to recapitalize. Obviously, it will be the taxpayers to once more provide the capital the euro area […]

Brexit casts a shadow over the LSE – Deutsche Börse merger: a tracer of how or if brexit is to be implemented

One of the most direct and important consequences of the Brexit vote is the uncertainty it casts on the merger of Europe’s largest stock exchanges and clearing houses, the London Stock Exchange and the German bourse in Frankfurt, the Deutsche Börse. The two mammoth institutions, the double sun of Europe’s financial universe, last March agreed […]

Why does the whole world want Britain to stay in the EU?

Foreign leaders, countries, international bodies and major world entities of any kind are supporting the ‘stay’ option for Britain ahead of 23 June referendum, about the country’s position in or out of the European Union. The American President Barack Obama and the Chinese and the Indian governments have expressly supported the ‘stay’ option, to mention […]

Who cares more about taxpayers? The US by being harsh on major banks or the EU still caressing them?

The world economy remains more or less motionless or even recedes six years after the financial meltdown, because the banking industry has not yet decided what’s best for its interests. Continue leveraging itself (borrowing) on central bank liquidity in a stagnating environment, or start deleveraging and send the world to another deep recession, if not […]

ECB’s new money bonanza handed out to help the real economy or create new bubbles?

Last Thursday the European Central Bank announced it will pump extra piles of freshly printed money into Eurozone’s banking system. The President of ECB, Mario Draghi said that he will be delivering €80 billion a month for the public bonds owned by banks for as long as it is needed. On top of this, the […]

What have the banks done to the markets making them unable to bear cheap oil?

Last Tuesday, a new steep fall of the price of crude oil by almost 5%, triggered another selloff in all the major capital markets of the world. The New York and the European stock exchanges lost anything between 2% and 3% of their capitalization. One may observe that this development is one of many of […]

Why are the financial markets shivering again?

The major central banks of the world are currently in the middle of a precise but of dubious results surgical operation on capital markets. On the one hand, the monetary authorities aim at supporting the real economy by injecting more cash into the financial system. On the other, they try to mitigate the risky super […]

WEF Davos 2016 LIVE: Banking moguls continue brandishing financial Armageddon to intimidate us all but in Davos they worry about the very distant future

On Thursday 7n January this newspaper commented that behind the capital markets selloff, which shook the financial world in the first week of this year, were the financial moguls who want to impose their terms to central banks and mainly the American Fed. Since then stock markets keep losing a lot of grounds every day. […]

EU to pay a dear price if the next crisis catches Eurozone stagnant and deflationary; dire statistics from Eurostat

Amidst the historically worst first week of a year since stock exchange records exist, the Eurozone economy remains stagnant and appears clearly unable to offer itself and the rest of the global economy a sigh of relief. All along the first week of the New Year Eurostat kept airing quite disappointing statistics for the Eurozone […]

Capital markets selloff: The financial moguls send messages to monetary authorities

The wild selloff in the major capital markets of the world that culminated last Monday, the first working day of the New Year and continued on Wednesday for a fifth day in row was not just an overreaction to the anticipated slowdown of the Chinese economy, as almost all chief analysts assumed in mainstream media. […]

A new global financial crisis develops fast; who denies it?

During the last two weeks the world’s largest stock markets had a wild time not seen since Lehman Brothers went bust on 15 September 2008. The New York stock exchange in Wall Street lost more than 8% of its capitalization in a few days and then recovered some of the losses to close last Friday […]

Greece’s Tsipras: Risking country and Eurozone or securing an extra argument for creditors?

The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his governing left wing SYRIZA party, cornered between its populist rhetoric for greener grass and the realities of the dragging on negotiations with the country’s creditors, called for a referendum next Sunday 5 July without a clearly defined question, denying to exactly clarify where the ‘yes’ or the […]

The EU Parliament and the ECB unknowingly or unwillingly fail to protect our financial assets

This week the European Parliament and the European Central Bank rather unknowingly or unwillingly failed to protect the European citizens from the attacks of ‘money sharks’. In two different occasions the two most important European institutions secured the bankers reign on peoples’ money. Let us take one thing at a time. When the average hard […]

The EU Commission by serving the banks offers poor support to European mainstream political parties

The 2008-2012 financial aka banking crisis and its devastating repercussions on the European Union, with deep recession and skyrocketing unemployment, are the main reasons why the EU political and economic establishment shivers ahead of the 22-25 May elections fearing a possible disastrous result. Eurosceptic extremists, nationalists and harlequins may occupy an increased part of the […]

Greece returns to markets at a high cost to taxpayers, after four years out in the cold

The time that Greece has been waiting for, for quite a long time (4 years) is about to come. Athens is now floating in the capital markets a sovereign bond issue of about €2.5 billion and already unofficial offers from investors have reached €16bn. A very hefty multiple coverage so far of 6.4 times. The book of […]

Is it impossible to place the banks under control?

Within the next few weeks the European Commission is expected to announce a proposal for a structural reform in the banking sector. The declared target is to make sure “that banks do not remain or become too-big, too-complex or too-interconnected to fail”. In announcing its intentions on this grandiose plan, the EU’s executive arm states […]