Luca Ventura

MILESTONES   By Luca Ventura   The oldest multinational in the world is about to get a substantial makeover. The news came on February 24th, when its CEO, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, also known as pope Francis, issued a Motu Proprio, ...

MILESTONES By Luca Ventura When in early January the US secretary of state John Kerry traveled to the Middle East, newspaper headlines mostly focused on his attempt to push yet another peace deal between Israel and Palestine. His efforts, however, ...

MILESTONES   By Luca Ventura   The announcement came early in November. Expressing the intention to break the monopoly of the Big Three in the financial ratings industry, credit ratings organizations from five countries proclaimed the launch of ARC Ratings, ...

When Apple announced back in October that it had hired Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts to lead its retail operations, the initial shock among analysts and investors wore off quickly. Though it was a surprise move, it made perfect sense.

MILESTONES By Luca Ventura With a fifth of the world’s population but only 9% of its land, China in recent years has aggressively upped its agricultural investments abroad, amassing over 2 million hectares of emerging markets farmland in Africa, Southeast ...

NEWSMAKERS   By Luca Ventura   Lazar Krstić has a daunting task ahead: saving Serbia from a debt crisis. A Yale graduate with no party affiliations or political experience, the 30-year-old McKinsey associate is expected to consolidate public finances and ...

MILESTONES   By Luca Ventura   “Implementation has been unsatisfactory in almost all areas; growth and debt sustainability assumptions continue to be over-optimistic.” It is with these incendiary comments about Greece that Paulo Nogueira Batista, the representative of Brazil and ...

NEWSMAKERS: US   By Luca Ventura   When AG Lafley handpicked Robert McDonald as his successor to the top post at Procter & Gamble in 2009, he could not have predicted that just four years later he would be called ...

NEWSMAKERS: SPAIN By Luca Ventura Appointed as chief executive of Santander in 2002, Alfredo Sáenz took less than a decade to turn the Spanish domestic lender into a multinational giant with operations in 40 countries. New CEO Marín kept a ...

NEWSMAKERS: CHINA   By Luca Ventura   As China’s economy faces its slowest growth in more than a decade, the focus turns to the new Finance minister, Lou Jiwei. Lou, 63, has arguably the highest international profile among prime minister ...

MILESTONE: ITALY   By Luca Ventura The oldest bank in the world, Tuscany’s Monte dei Paschi di Siena, came close to ending its 540-year history late in January, when it revealed losses of up to €750 million ($1 billion) caused ...

MILESTONES：GLOBAL   By Luca Ventura   “For the first time in regulatory history, we have a truly global minimum standard for bank liquidity,” announced the head of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, Bank of England governor Mervyn King, during a ...

MILESTONES: IMF   By Luca Ventura “Temporary capital controls might prove useful,” Christine Lagarde said to the audience gathered at the Malaysian Economic Association in Kuala Lumpur in November.   Lagarde at the IMF takes a marked departure on cross-border ...

NEWSMAKERS: INDIA   By Luca Ventura   Often labeled arrogant and brusque, India's finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, is not the most popular politician within his own Congress Party and not much in the public eye.   Chidambaram's new ministerial appointment ...

NEWSMAKERS: UNITED STATES   By Luca Ventura   Sheila Bair is determined to turn up the heat on regulators and accelerate financial reforms.   Bair: protecting the US economy from the next crisis Photo Credit : ALBERT H. TEICH/ Shutterstock.com ...

NEWSMAKERS: FRANCE   By Luca Ventura   French president-elect François Hollande is a flag-bearer for adding growth incentives to a European fiscal agreement, rather than just doling out austerity measures.   Hollande elated at defeating Sarkozy Photo Credit : SKPHOTOGRAPHY / Shutterstock.com ...

NEWSMAKERS: ITALY   By Luca Ventura   When Tuscan bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena appointed the charismatic Alessandro Profumo as its new chairman in late April, the news made headlines around the world.   Profumo is ready for the challenge ...

NEWSMAKERS: CANADA   By Luca Ventura   On March 29, telecoms company Research In Motion posted its first loss in seven years.   Tough road ahead for RIM chief Thorsten Heins Photo Credit : REUTERS/EDUARDO MUNOZ It was not what shareholders had ...

NEWSMAKERS: NORWAY   By Luca Ventura   A former bank teller, Norway’s finance minister Sigbjørn Johnsen is not too concerned about upsetting some of his erstwhile bank employers.     Johnsen takes on Norway’s banks again Photo Credit : REUTERS/SCANPIX “It ...

NEWSMAKERS: ICELAND   By Luca Ventura   As his trial commenced in March in Reykjavik, Geir Haarde, the former prime minister of Iceland, was the first world leader to face criminal charges over the 2008 financial crisis. Haarde, 60, could serve up ...

NEWSMAKERS: GLOBAL   By Luca Ventura   When Robert Zoellick announced in February that he would leave the World Bank in June, at the expiration of his five-year term as president, initial speculation over his possible successor revolved around the usual ...

NEWSMAKERS: JAPAN   By Luca Ventura   When Michael Woodford was promoted to president and then CEO of camera and medical equipment maker Olympus Corporation earlier this year, analysts and investors had high hopes for the future of the 92-year-old ...

MILESTONES: GREECE   By Luca Ventura   The recently-announced merger of Greek banks Alpha Bank and Eurobank EFG could breathe fresh life into the much-troubled Greek banking sector.   Tides turning in Greece with bank merger In fact, it would difficult ...

NEWSMAKERS: GLOBAL   By Luca Ventura   While the shocking arrest in May of IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn in connection with an alleged sexual assault dominated the news all over the world, it only complicated a plot that was ...

NEWSMAKERS : ITALY   By Luca Ventura   When the dairy giant Parmalat, a household name in more than 30 countries, collapsed in 2003 with a $20 billion hole in its accounts, Italian finance minister Giulio Tremonti fittingly dubbed the ...

COMPANY TO WATCH: COMPANIA DE MINAS BUENAVENTURA/PERU Compañía de Minas Buenaventura, Peru’s largest publicly traded precious metals mining company, is basking in record high prices for much of its output. Buenaventura operates seven mines in Peru and holds controlling interests ...