Even at a European conference about fintech, one country dominated the conversation: China. This week, hundreds of fintech companies, from startups to tech giants, gathered at the Money 20/20 conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands. One key theme at the gathering was China’s leading role in the fintech industry. “Alibaba and Ant Financial, we are literally the […]
Read moreArgentina and the International Monetary Fund have reached an agreement for a three-year, $50 billion standby arrangement, subject to IMF board approval, the government and the Fund said on Thursday. Argentina requested IMF assistance on May 8 after its peso currency weakened sharply in an investor exodus from emerging markets. The deal marks a turning […]
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THE International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade association for airlines, was founded in 1945 to promote the interests of carriers around the world. In recent years the airline cartel of old has been accused of being out of tune with the times, particularly by low-cost carriers such as Ryanair, which is Europe’s biggest. At […]
Read moreThere won’t be another recession until at least 2021, Wall Street veteran Byron Wien told CNBC on Thursday, betting the current economic expansion would last longer than what a group of top business economists recently predicted. “There isn’t a recession in sight,” Wien, a vice chairman at Blackstone, said in a “Squawk on the Street” […]
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THE glitzy Gulf states take pride in superlatives. They have the world’s tallest building, the biggest shopping mall, even (for a time) the most expensive cocktail. To that list, add a slightly less glamorous entry: what a judge has called one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history. On June 1st a court in the […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] No time for tweeting AMERICA’S unemployment statistics attract close attention, even from presidents. Early on June 1st President Donald Trump tweeted that he was looking forward to the latest figure (3.8%), released that morning. China’s unemployment numbers, by contrast, attract mostly ridicule. They have barely budged since 2011 despite the […]
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AFTER a plane crash, air-safety investigators are dispatched to the wreckage site to find out what went wrong and ensure it never happens again. Their financial counterparts have a similar job to do with the Indian government’s proposed sale of Air India. Mooted for nearly a year, the first round of preliminary bids ended on […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] BUYING and selling shares in India is not for the faint of heart. Its own central-bank governor reckons equity capital is taxed up to five times. Never fear. There is a well-established alternative. Investors can just as easily buy financial instruments that track share prices but are not themselves shares. […]
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IT IS hard to go a day in China without seeing Fan Bingbing. The doe-eyed starlet gazes from film posters (she has averaged four films a year for the past decade), airbrushed ads for global brands and glossy magazine covers. But in the past week she has graced articles about tax evasion. Shares in a […]
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[unable to retrieve full-text content] Delivering the goods LATE on a Monday morning the village of Zhangwei is quiet. Chickens scratch and cluck at the side of the road. Workers use wooden spades to spread grain on the highway to dry, using half its width so that traffic can still pass on the other side. […]
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