October 2016

Global Finance takes the world’s central bank governors to school in our annual “report cards” grading their economic stewardship.

Central bank governors face the tough task of stimulating growth with monetary policy, which seems to have reached a natural limit. Only fiscal policy can set the stage for long-term expansion.  

Study says income and wealth inequality, which have widened a lot in the past 30 years in the US and elsewhere, make recessions more severe because poor people, who have little or no savings and often flawed credit, sharply reduce consumption when facing a sudden drop in income.

If you think record-low interest rates are the result of years of expansionary monetary policices, think again. 

Global Finance unveils its annual lists of the best banks in the world, globally, regionally and by country. The winners outperformed their peers and provide top-notch service to clients in a challenging environment. 

Read how these winning financial institutions earned designation as one of the World's Best Banks for 2016. 

A roundup of winners of Global Finance awards during the past year.

Yann Gérardin, head of corporate and institutional banking, talks about how BNP stays ahead in serving corporate and institutional clients.

Jennifer Tory, group head, personal and commercial banking at RBC, discusses the bank’s ongoing quest to blend its digital and physical channels for clients.

While on a road show for US clients, Bryan Leith, chief operating officer of KPMG’s global Africa practice, sat down with Global Finance to discuss the continent’s economic prospects. 

Raghuram Rajan's departure as head of the Reserve Bank of India to return to teaching at the University of Chicago, made some Indians fear upheaval, but with his deputy taking the helm, stability is expected. 

Policy changes and consistent growth have positioned India to draw fresh investment.

Will bringing in an outsider revive the brand with fresh insight or cause it to stumble on the turns?

Although Liam Fox made headlines for saying British businessmen are too lazy to boost exports, less extensively reported remarks by the UK’s international trade secretary hint at a significant change in policy.

The EU hit Apple with a tax bill, but it's not the only company in regulators' sights. McDonalds, Facebook, Google and Amazon are being called on the carpet about tax practices too.

Some believe Hanjin's bankruptcy signals that quantitative easing has no more power, and a global recession is on the horizon. 

A deepening and widening of the nascent corporate bond market in India is on track, following reforms by the Reserve Bank of India aimed to draw in foreign and small investors. 

The year 2016 is set to break a record for withdrawn global M&A deals, with regulators scotching several high-profile mergers. 

Blue-chip bond buys add liquidity fuel to companies already swimming in cash.

Big profits from managing short lead times helped Amancio Ortega—Spanish business magnate, founder and chairman of the Inditex fashion group—recently pass Bill Gates’s fortune for the second time. 

US: Heather Bresch, the CEO of Mylan, an American pharmaceuticals company, finds herself at the center of one of the biggest pharma controversies in recent years: price-gouging.

In potentially the biggest foreign corporate takeover ever by a German company, Bayer seeks to buy Monsanto for 62 billion. Werner Bauman gets into agribusiness.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has a change of heart regarding US sanctions against her country. 

Shavkat Mirziyoyev, new ruler of Uzbekistan, looks likely to be just as much a hard-line autocrat as his predecessor was. 

A series of proposed megamergers in the global agrochemicals and seed industries—capped by Bayer's record $66 billion cash bid for Monsanto—raise fears of a pricing monopoly in the farm-supply industry and threat to the global food supply.

The intensifying regulatory environment has led more law schools to offer executive education programs that focus on law, ethics and compliance.  

Beirut aims to become the number-one hub in the Middle East for young entrepreneurs, so the Lebanese Central Bank recently added $200 million its 2013 promise to guarantee $400 million in investment in the knowledge economy.

Post-Brexit, real estate deals were supposed to decline--especially in London. Yet the market may prove more resilient than expected. 

Blockchain technology finally gets "real" with a letter-of-credit deal between Ornua, an Irish dairy company, and state-owned wholesaler Seychelles Trading Company. 

Gulf nations are the latest in the growing number of countries implementing value-added taxes (VAT) on goods and services.
 

The 2016 Global Cloud Data Security Study, compiled for digital security company Gemalto by the Ponemon Institute, shows that safety measures are not keeping up with Cloud data challenges, making organizations vulnerable in storage and management of confidential information.