Headlines
Americas
Alberta’s secession movement spells trouble for Justin Trudeau
THE 700 PEOPLE who gathered on a recent Saturday night at the Boot Scootin’ Boogie Dancehall in Edmonton, the capital of the western Canadian province of Alberta, came not to boogie but to vent. Baseball caps for sale bore such slogans as “Make Alberta Great Again”, “The West Wants Out” and “Wexit”. On stage, before a Canadian flag held...
The surprising similarities between AMLO and Jair Bolsonaro
TO ALL APPEARANCES they are opposites and foes. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is a foul-mouthed former army captain of the hard right. Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador is a would-be revolutionary of the left. Mr Bolsonaro appeals to the worst in Brazilians, with his diatribes against women and gays, casual racism and fondness for guns and chopping...
Desi Bouterse’s murder conviction will not trouble him much
TWO DAYS after a military court found Desi Bouterse, Suriname’s president, guilty of murdering 15 political foes, he returned home from a visit to China. A throng of supporters, many wearing the purple of his National Democratic Party, turned up to greet him at Paramaribo’s international airport on December 1st. Mr Bouterse brought back a promise...
Why Donald Trump wants to keep religious adoption agencies open
THE FIRST lesson Melissa Buck taught her eldest child was that she was not going to hit him. The 37-year-old stay-at-home mother from Holt, Michigan and her husband had fostered the then four-year-old and his two younger siblings after a parishioner at their church told them that the children, having been removed from their mother, were at risk of being...
Short Creek starts to move beyond its past as a fundamentalist fief
JUDGING BY its shops, Short Creek seems more like a trendy suburb of somewhere like Portland than a small town on the Utah-Arizona border with just shy of 8,000 people. There are two health-food stores, a bakery and a vape shop. The occasional sight of women in prairie dresses and the huge houses with thick walls are the only conspicuous evidence Short...
Asia Pacific
SANNE appoints new business development director in Tokyo
Makoto Nagao, has been appointed to the newly created role of Director, Business Development adding further strength to SANNE’s Asia-Pacific business. With more than 35 years of experience, Nagao-san brings a wealth of knowledge, following a lengthy career with Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, SMFG. While he was at SMFG, Nagao-san was General Manager...
Crayfish.io launches UK’s first funded initiative to get businesses China-ready
A ground-breaking initiative with a £500k investment fund dedicated to helping UK businesses get ‘China-ready’ has been launched in Cambridge by global online platform, Crayfish.io. Starting in September, the Crayfish China Accelerator programme - which has secured UK-China Enterprise Ltd (UKCE), a Chinese-capital-backed VC fund, as its...
SANNE opens new office in Mumbai, India
SANNE, a leading global provider of alternative asset and corporate services has further extended its global reach with the opening of a new office in Mumbai, India. With existing offices in 18 leading international finance centres, SANNE now has a local presence in one of the world’s fastest growing alternative markets and is also pleased to announce...
SANNE secures new bookkeeping licence in China
SANNE, a leading global provider of alternative asset and corporate administration services obtains new bookkeeping licence in China boosting its already strong proposition. The new licence expands SANNE’s existing product offering in China, adding bookkeeping, accounting and tax preparation services for Chinese registered entities. Jing Jing...
SANNE appoints Country Head to lead its Singapore business
Adding further expertise and knowledge to its APAC business As a leading global provider of alternative asset and corporate business services, SANNE is pleased to announce the appointment of David Fowler to the role of Country Head − Singapore with immediate effect. Based in SANNE’s Singapore office, David will be taking over the role from Valérie...
Europe
Augusta raises additional $115m for litigation and dispute funding
Investment in response to growing demand from lawyers Augusta, the UK’s largest litigation and disputes funder by case volume announces it has raised a further US $115m from a multi-billion-dollar US-based investment manager. In 2018, Augusta secured £150m from a global investment fund, to finance business growth and investment in funding cases....
An affiliate of Sun European Partners announces that it has completed the sale of Famosa
Sun European Partners, LLP (“Sun European Partners” or “Sun”) today announces that one of its affiliates has completed the sale of Fábricas Agrupadas de Muñecas de Onil, S.A. (“Famosa” or “the Company”), a leading designer, developer, manufacturer and distributer of toys in Spain and throughout the world, to Giochi Preziosi S.p.A.. Famosa,...
Huge Tax Changes for Self-Employed Following Publication of New Legislation
On 11 July 2019, the Government published draft legislation outlining the IR35 changes coming to the private sector, which are expected to affect 250,000 businesses. The reform will impact users and suppliers of personal service company contractors in the private sector. Companies have only nine months to plan for the new off-payroll changes, as they...
Young people pick their banking partners for the future
Battle of the brands Generation Z calls the brands it will bank on in 2030 Britain Banks most trusted for handling payments and safe storage of dataTech brands first choice for creating smart, real-time servicesAs a sector, financial services scores poorly for ethics and positive social impact More than two in five young people (43%) believe that...
Alcentra Closes Significant Capital Raise for its European Direct Lending Strategy
Record €5.5 billion raise reflects strong investor demand, Alcentra’s track record of deployment and returns Alcentra, one of Europe’s largest and longest tenured managers of private debt and part of BNY Mellon Investment Management, has announced the close of its latest European direct lending capital raise. The firm has raised €5.5...
Mena
U.K. Halts Torture Case Against Former First Lady of Liberia
LONDON — A British judge has dismissed torture charges against the ex-wife of a former Liberian president before her trial next month over accusations relating to the country’s civil war.Agnes Reeves Taylor, the ex-wife of former President Charles Taylor, was arrested in London in 2017 and charged with eight counts of torture and conspiracy to commit...
U.K. Halts Torture Case Against Ex-Wife of Liberia’s Charles Taylor
LONDON — A British judge has dismissed torture charges against the ex-wife of a former Liberian president before her trial next month over accusations relating to the country’s civil war.Agnes Reeves Taylor, the ex-wife of former President Charles Taylor, was arrested in London in 2017 and charged with eight counts of torture and conspiracy to commit...
Abandoned Baby Giraffe Dies With Dog by Its Side
JOHANNESBURG — A baby giraffe that was befriended by a dog after he was abandoned in the wild has died, a South African animal orphanage said. The giraffe, named Jazz, collapsed after suffering a brain hemorrhage, the Rhino Orphanage in Limpopo Province said in a Facebook post on Friday.“Our team is heartbroken,” the orphanage said. “The last...
Cannibalistic Dinosaurs Went Through a Lot of Teeth
If there was a tooth fairy in the Cretaceous, dinosaurs kept it busy. Unlike humans, which lose just one set of teeth over a lifetime, dinosaurs often lost tens or even hundreds of sets.Plant-eating dinosaurs had to chew lots of tough material to sustain their large bodies, causing them to frequently replace their teeth. But researchers were surprised...
Building Collapse in Nairobi Leaves at Least Four Dead, 29 Injured
NAIROBI, Kenya — At least four people were dead and 29 injured after a six-story residential building collapsed in the Kenyan capital on Friday after weeks of heavy rains, a government official said. Rescuers were still searching for survivors as the night wore on, said the official, Wilson Njenga, the Nairobi regional commissioner.It wasn’t immediately...
International
Social unrest in places like Hong Kong is not proof of economic failure
THE MOLOTOV COCKTAILS, one blue, one yellow, arrive swaddled in a towel and wedged in a backpack. Wearing builders’ gloves and Guy Fawkes masks, the protesters balance them casually on a railing, like mixologists in a bar. Then the bricks arrive, piled on a trolley, hidden under a canopy of umbrellas. The protesters spend a few exultant minutes hurling...
Where do the Asian tiger economies go from here?
EVEN IN THEIR prime, the tigers had their detractors. Twenty-five years ago this month, Paul Krugman, an economist, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs, an American policy journal, entitled “The Myth of Asia’s Miracle”. He argued that Asia’s seemingly dynamic economies displayed, on closer inspection, “startlingly little evidence of improvements...
After half a century of success, the Asian tigers must reinvent themselves
THE FOUR Asian tigers—Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan—once fascinated the economic world. From the early 1960s until the 1990s, they regularly achieved double-digit growth. A generation that had toiled as farmers and labourers watched their grandchildren become some of the most educated people on the planet. The tigers started by making...
It has become harder for the Asian tigers to prosper through exports
BONNIE TU IS laughing. She just discovered the crisp red “Make America Great Again” hat that a colleague left on her desk as a joke. The chairwoman of Giant, the world’s biggest bike manufacturer, is no fan of Donald Trump. His tariffs have messed with her supply chains and driven up costs. “It’s a tax on biking, the healthiest activity in...
Does democracy hurt or help growth in the tiger economies of Asia?
THE TAIWAN STRAIT is often described as a possible flashpoint. Across this narrow body of water, China points thousands of missiles at the country it regards as a rogue province. But for those working on Formosa 1, an offshore wind farm, the strait is something else. “It’s the best wind in the world,” said one engineer recently, looking out at...