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Wirecard AG, the Munich-based payments and financial services company that was a member of the DAX index of Germany’s 30 leading blue-chip stocks, collapsed spectacularly and filed for insolvency on June 25. Among many lessons, this disaster has revealed major gaps in audit...
Two reports published in early 2020 shed new light on this challenge. The European Central Bank’s (ECB) risk report on less-significant institutions is the first of what is intended to be an annual series. The impact assessment study on the most important differences between...
In no country in Europe has COVID-19 claimed more victims than in Italy. Similarly, nowhere in Europe has the radical populist right benefitted more from the pandemic than in Italy. At the beginning of April, polls had Italy’s two major radical right-wing populist parties — Matteo Salvini’s...
As the COVID-19 pandemic and policy reactions have disrupted markets, bankers on both sides of the Atlantic have called for the relaxation of accounting standards introduced in the wake of the 2007-08 global financial crisis. This set of standards is known as expected credit loss...
The most insidious tactic of COVID-19 is to get a person’s body to attack itself. In the worst cases, the body’s autoimmune system essentially goes haywire as it tries to fight off infection. This “cytokine storm” can lead to serious inflammation in the lungs and ultimately to...
Central Eastern Europe (CEE) has been hit by the novel coronavirus — which causes a disease called COVID-19 — at a time when upgrades to its industry are overdue, the cost of labor has gone up, the tailwinds from EU funding are about to wane, and the region is in desperate...
This week, the delegations of the European Union and the United Kingdom started the institutional meetings concerning the Brexit deal negotiations. The transition period during which the two sides may possibly find an agreement on a variety of issues — almost everything from trade to...
Business Insider reminds its readers about Boris Johnson’s incredible plan to physically unite Scotland and Northern Ireland by building a 22-mile bridge between them. The article bears the title, “Boris Johnson is deadly serious about building a £20 billion bridge between Scotland and...
The European economy is expanding for the seventh year in a row despite a slowdown at the global level. However, social and economic inequalities within EU member states have been increasing significantly in the last decade. Not all citizens are benefitting from the current economic...
The TED website describes Kishore Mahbubani, a career diplomat from Singapore, as someone who “re-envisions global power dynamics through the lens of rising Asian economies.” This description is not just apt for Mahbubani but also for his new book, “Has the West Lost It?” The title may...
Since Matteo Salvini took over the leadership of the Northern League party (rebranded as the League before last year’s elections) in late 2013, the focus of his harsh political campaigns shifted from southern Italians — the so-called “Terroni,” or people of the countryside — to...
