Headlines
Americas
The legalisation of recreational cannabis is weeding out teenaged users
WHEN JUSTIN TRUDEAU promised to legalise cannabis use across the border in Canada, his main reason for doing so was to protect the young. Cannabis is bad for the developing brain and a worrying number of minors were taking the drug. The counterintuitive proposal was based on the idea that regulated sales would drive out illegal sellers, who do not care...
Remembering third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot
SANDWICHED BETWEEN Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush on the presidential debate platform in 1992, Ross Perot looked like a grizzled man-child. At five feet five inches tall, he was almost a foot shorter than the thoroughbred Republican president and Democratic governor. He had to stand—while they slouched on their bar stools—to look them in the...
Was Jeffrey Epstein’s plea deal fishy?
THE INDICTMENT of Jeffrey Epstein on charges of sex-trafficking described a pyramid scheme for the sexual abuse of minors. Mr Epstein would pay hundreds of dollars apiece for sexual encounters with adolescent girls at his mansion in Manhattan’s Upper East Side and then pay them to recruit other underage girls. When police searched the residence they...
America mulls regulating facial recognition
WHEN THINKING about police use of facial recognition, most Americans probably fall somewhere between two extremes. On one side is the approach taken by San Francisco and Somerville, Massachusetts, both of which earlier this year banned municipal agencies, including the police, from using facial recognition. On the other is the view expressed by Michael...
Simulators teach police and their critics when to shoot
YOU ARE 23 years old, fresh out of the academy and eager to protect and serve, out on what was supposed to be a quiet weekday-afternoon patrol. You pass a red pickup truck, which your partner recognises: it belongs to a guy with a couple of outstanding arrest warrants. You pull him over. Your partner gets out of the car and tells the guy he has to bring...
Asia Pacific
DLS Law Offices headed by Dipti Lavya Swain merges its practice with HSA Advocates in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bhubaneswar
We are pleased to announce that Dipti Lavya Swain, Founder & Managing Partner of DLS Law Offices is merging his firm with HSA Advocates. DLS Law currently operates from New Delhi and also has a presence in Mumbai and Bhubaneshwar. With over 13 years of work experience, including in top tier firms as a partner, Dipti is a specialist in Private Equity,...
Gaurav Sahay joins HSA Advocates as Partner in the Bangalore office
Gaurav Sahay joins HSA Advocates as a Partner in the firm's Corporate and M&A practice. He will be operating out of the firm’s Bangalore office. Gaurav has over 13 years of experience in advising various domestic and multinational clients on a wide range of legal issues including corporate and commercial laws, antitrust/ competition, intellectual...
Hong Kong Voted as Top International Financial Centre by Global Corporate Services Industry: Vistra 2020 Report
Trend toward onshore and mid-shore jurisdictions continues The latest report on the Corporate Services industry conducted by Vistra, a leading global trust, fund administration and corporate services provider, reveals that the trend toward onshore and mid-shore jurisdiction for doing business is continuing with Hong Kong topping the list, being...
Is China about to change the shape of global trade… again?
For much of 2018, China’s tariff wars with the US dominated media headlines. In 2019 so far, investors are also witnessing increasing signs of a Chinese slowdown, and with it a new approach to economic stimulus by Chinese policymakers. What does this mean for global trade and investment? A potted history: China’s role in the world economy After...
Cabe Malaysia Conference addresses shared global challenges
A number of issues facing the construction industry – the impact of the Hackitt report and future directives of UK legislation; the true value of sustainable buildings and standardisation of contracts – have been debated at a conference in Malaysia, illustrating the fact that many issues are not restricted by geography, but indeed are shared...
Europe
Riverside ‘insures’ latest investment is a success
Riverside partners with ACTINEO, the leading German InsurTech Player specialized in bodily injury claims The Riverside Company, a global private equity firm, has partnered with ACTINEO, the leading German InsurTech Player specialized in bodily injury claims, providing tech-enabled and data-driven services to the insurance industry. Based...
The Finance Durham Fund celebrates two-year anniversary investing £3.4 million since inception
Maven managed Finance Durham Fund has invested £3.4 million since launching two years ago backing 10 local businesses to support growth ambitions and create jobs Maven establishes ‘Access to Finance’ workshop programme to help companies secure growth funding Finance Durham (“The Fund”), managed by Maven Capital Partners (“Maven”),...
GCA Altium reinforces Manchester team with hires and promotions
Global investment bank GCA Altium has strengthened its Manchester team with two promotions and two new hires. Mark Smith has been promoted to Director, after five years at GCA Altium. Mark has advised on over £700m of transactions in the last year, including the investment in UKFast by Inflexion in a £406m deal, and the sale of Sofology to DFS...
Tareck Safi joins H.I.G. Realty Partners as Managing Director and Head of Real Estate Debt in Europe
H.I.G. Capital (“H.I.G.”), a leading global alternative asset management firm with over $30 billion of equity capital under management, is pleased to announce that Tareck Safi has joined the firm’s real estate team as Managing Director and Head of Real Estate Debt. Tareck brings over 20 years of experience originating, structuring and investing...
T Bailey Fund Services strengthens board with appointment of independent non-executive director
Independent full-service fund administration service provider T Bailey Fund Services (TBFS) has appointed experienced governance professional Anna Troup to its Board of Directors. With more than 20 years' experience in the asset management sector, Mrs Troup is joining the Nottingham-based business as an independent Non-Executive Director (NED). Troup...
Mena
Ebola Outbreak Reaches Major City in Congo, Renewing Calls for Emergency Order
The year-old Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo has reached the city of Goma, which has a population of nearly 2 million, an international airport and ferries and buses that fan out over much of the region. Goma is also just one kilometer, or about half a mile, from the border with Rwanda.Just one infected man reached the city over the...
Lion Bones Are Profitable for Breeders, and Poachers
An international treaty prohibits the buying and selling of products made from any of the big cat species, save one: the African lion. If the animals have been bred in captivity in South Africa, then their skeletons, including claws and teeth, may be traded around the world.Lion parts legally exported from South Africa usually wind up in Asia, where...
Jacob Zuma Says Corruption Allegations Were a Conspiracy to Oust Him
CAPE TOWN — Jacob Zuma, the former president of South Africa whose tenure was marred by scandals, told a high-profile corruption inquiry on Monday that he was the victim of a long-running smear campaign, and had been “vilified” and “alleged to be the king of corrupt people.”“There has been a drive to remove me from the scene, a wish that...
Jacob Zuma Makes First Appearance at South Africa Corruption Inquiry
CAPE TOWN — Jacob Zuma, the former South African president whose tenure was marred by corruption scandals, appeared for the first time on Monday before a high-profile commission looking into accusations that he enabled the plundering and misuse of state resources.Under Mr. Zuma’s leadership, the governing African National Congress became embroiled...
She Moved Back to Tell Her Homeland’s Story, Then Fell Prey to the Unsparing Narrative of Terrorism
She grew up in Canada, but like many children of immigrants, dreamed of reclaiming her heritage.So Hodan Nalayeh, a journalist, founded an online show, Integration TV, to chronicle life in her country of birth, Somalia and in the Somalian diaspora. Then in December, she moved back there, newly married.Ms. Nalayeh’s reporting steered clear of politics,...
International
Digitisation is helping to deliver goods faster
“DIGITISATION WILL have the impact on supply chains that steam and electricity had on manufacturing,” declares Joe Terino of Bain. His claim seems hyperbolic, but it may yet prove prescient. Nearly 30 years after the internet first emerged as a tool for business, the management of supply chains at most MNCs, which do not operate in the rarefied...
Supply chains are undergoing a dramatic transformation
TOM LINTON, chief procurement and supply-chain officer at Flex, an American contract-manufacturing giant, has his finger on The Pulse. That is the name of his firm’s whizzy command centre in California, which is evocative of a Pentagon war room. The kit allows him to monitor Flex’s 16,000 suppliers and 100-plus factories, producing everything from...
Amazon and Alibaba are pacesetters of the next supply-chain revolution
GREG SMITH is obsessed with the freshness of strawberries. Walmart’s top supply-chain executive in America is overhauling the retail giant’s distribution system, and in his mind speed is paramount. Strawberries have only 12.2 days of life after picking, he reckons, and the firm did not always get them to stores fast enough. The radical changes he...
Multinational companies are adjusting to shorter supply chains
IN THE BOOM years of globalisation from 1990, one of the ideas that became gospel, spread by authors such as Thomas Friedman, was that the world had become flat. National boundaries mattered very little in terms of sourcing and manufacturing, went the argument. The idea was so pervasive, says Hau Lee of Stanford University, that “companies just built...
Supply chains for different industries are fragmenting in different ways
GLOBALISATION IS BECOMING regionalisation. Analysis by MGI finds that the global value chains (GVCs) in 16 of 17 big industries it studied have been contracting since the global financial crisis. Trade continued to grow in absolute terms from 2007 to 2017, but during that period exports in those same value chains declined from 28.1% to 22.5% of gross...