Headlines
Americas
Mississippi changes its state flag
THE MAGNOLIA STATE this week became the last southern state to change its state flag, removing the Confederate battle flag which had formed part of the design. It will adopt a new flag, incorporating the words “In God We Trust” but excluding the so-called “stainless banner”. The 87-year-old widow of Medgar Evers, a murdered civil-rights icon,...
The pandemic shuts down a lifeline for Cuba
Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub ALTHOUGH THE United States has embargoed Cuba’s economy since the 1960s, the flow of goods, money and people between them has never stopped. Often the interchange is carried out by mulas,...
AMLO and Trump plan a frenemies’ get-together
HISTORY WILL record the Mexican-American summit to take place on July 8th-9th as one of the odder ones. It will be a rare face-to-face meeting in the covid-19 era, bringing together leaders who are notably reluctant to promote social distancing. (Their countries have bigger caseloads as a result.) President Donald Trump has often bullied Mexico since...
Covid-19 gives Cartagena a chance to restrain tourism
Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub FOR DECADES Colombia had trouble attracting tourists. Few wanted to visit a country where drug lords bombed passenger jets and guerrillas kidnapped ordinary citizens. The country became...
Ecuador is in intensive care, and a straitjacket
Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub AT THE START of the covid-19 pandemic in Latin America in March and April, Ecuador offered the world Dantesque images of dead bodies dumped in the streets of Guayaquil, a tropical port...
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
Used Clothes Ban May Crimp Kenyan Style. It May Also Lift Local Design.
NAIROBI, Kenya — Catherine Muringo’s wardrobe consists of secondhand outfits shipped from all over the world: colorful blouses and jeans from Canada, floral dresses from the United States, trench coats from Australia and leather handbags from the United Kingdom.For years, Ms. Muringo bought the used clothes and accessories at cheap prices in open-air...
Ivory Coast Prime Minister Dies After Cabinet Meeting
DAKAR, Senegal — The prime minister of Ivory Coast, a candidate for president in a coming election, died suddenly, the country’s president announced on Wednesday.The death of Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, 61, cast uncertainty on the West African country’s presidential election in three months, in which he was to be the ruling party’s...
Over 180 Bodies Found Dumped in Burkina Faso Town, Report Says
DAKAR, Senegal — The bodies of at least 180 men thought to have been killed by security forces have been found dumped in fields, by roadsides and under bridges in a town in the West African country of Burkina Faso over the past eight months, witnesses told human rights researchers.Residents of the town, Djibo, in the north of the country, said many...
A Bird? A Plane? No, It’s a Google Balloon Beaming the Internet
NAIROBI, Kenya — A fleet of high-altitude balloons started delivering internet service to Kenya on Tuesday, extending online access to tens of thousands of people in the first-ever commercial deployment of the technology.The balloons, which hover about 12 miles up in the stratosphere — well above commercial airplanes — will initially provide a...
365 Elephants Died in Botswana. The Cause Is a Mystery
On May 25, conservationists were flying over Botswana’s Okavango Panhandle when they counted something disturbing: 169 dead elephants. A second flight in June revealed more carcasses, bringing the total to 356. Some of the animals appeared to have died suddenly, collapsing chest-first while walking or running. No tusks were removed, suggesting that...
International
The UN is mobilising for the next quarter-century
LUCKILY, GIVEN the pandemic, the UN did not plan a boastful birthday. Instead, it decided to ask what the world thinks. It has launched an effort to to gather views from everywhere, in the spirit of the opening words of its charter, “We the peoples”. With the help of a mass online survey, in-depth polling across 50 countries, hundreds of live “dialogues”...
Global leadership is missing in action
A FEW WEEKS after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour, Winston Churchill was a guest at the White House. President Franklin Roosevelt was so eager to tell him he had come up with a name for what would become a new world security organisation that, the story goes, he hurried into Churchill’s bedroom, to find the prime minister naked save for a bathrobe....
Who runs the world?
CRISES CAN bring clarity. In the financial crisis of 2008-09, the G20 club of big economies came into its own, reflecting how economic power had spread beyond the rich world’s G7. One thing the covid-19 pandemic has laid bare is an absence of global leadership. This time the G20 has done little beyond a rhetorical pledge to “do whatever it takes”...
The UN’s structures built in 1945 are not fit for 2020, let alone beyond it
“IF YOU DIDN’T have the UN you really would have to reinvent it,” says Stephen Schlesinger, author of a history of its founding. Maybe, but nobody in their right mind would design it as it exists today. Insiders complain of a tangle of overlapping agencies, senseless silos and barricaded budgets. “If you locked a team of evil geniuses in a laboratory,...
Mobilising for the next quarter-century
LUCKILY, GIVEN the pandemic, the UN did not plan a boastful birthday. Instead, it decided to ask what the world thinks. It has launched an effort to to gather views from everywhere, in the spirit of the opening words of its charter, “We the peoples”. With the help of a mass online survey, in-depth polling across 50 countries, hundreds of live “dialogues”...