Markets remain abuzz with fintech applications that have the power to reengineer the financial services world and, significantly, even alter the financial inclusion landscape. Over the recent years, there have been several global adoptions of innovative technologies to fashion new business models...
As the European Union is approaching the Brexit endgame, the risk of further fragmentation is looming over its already fractured capital markets. The future composition of Europe is not the only force at play. Regulatory divergence, reignition of a trade war between the United States and China,...
Most businesses perish not because of strong competition or adverse macroeconomic conditions but because of cracks within. One such failing is weak corporate governance. For publicly listed companies, this often translates to controlling shareholders or “promoters” pursuing policies and...
In Cambodia, more than 2 million of the country’s 10-million-strong adult workforce hold a microcredit loan. Each of those loans comes to an average of $3,320, or twice the per capita GDP of the country. While microcredit was once considered a useful tool, without a national social assistance...
Anyone who knows how Wall Street works will not be surprised to learn that when the novel coronavirus epidemic began to turn into a full-fledged pandemic in the first two months of 2020, people in the know saw a major opportunity to play Monopoly. Any major shift affecting society and people’s...
China is well on its way to becoming a cashless society. More than 600 million Chinese already use Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay to pay for much of what they purchase. Between them, the two companies control approximately 90% of China’s mobile payments market, which totaled some...
The Oxford dictionary defines a spoof as “A humorous imitation of something, typically a film or a particular genre of film, in which its characteristic features are exaggerated for comic effect.” The Collins Dictionary offers this definition: “A spoof is something such as an article or...
Buzzfeed has made what many take to be a shocking revelation about how the world’s most powerful financial institutions skirt morality and the law. Others who have followed the activities of the biggest international banks over recent decades may simply wonder why anyone should be surprised....
China’s footprint in global foreign direct investment (FDI) has increased notably since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. That served to bring Chinese overseas FDI closer to a level that one would expect, based on the country’s weight in the global economy. China...
An article written by Henry M. Paulson Jr. should attract the attention of anyone trying to keep pace with the evolution of a battered global economy in a rapidly shifting geopolitical environment. Paulson is not some lightweight journalist. He served as the United States secretary of the...
In a Reuters article dated August 5, with the title “As dollar slides, some investors fret about its status as world's reserve currency,” Saqib Iqbal Ahmed signals what may be the indicator of a looming seismic shift in the global economy. The article highlights the ever more visible fragility...