North America

14 Years On With Nafta once again coming to the forefront of water-cooler discussions as a result of the political ping-pong between Democratic presidential hopefuls in the US, we look back at the development of the ground-breaking free trade agreement ...

Nafta Focus Global Finance names the most influential and important people in Nafta commerce and finance. Gastón Azcárraga Andrade President, Consejo Mexicano de Hombres de Negocios, and CEO, Grupo Posadas Mexico Gastón Azcárraga Andrade has been CEO of Grupo Posadas, ...

UNITED STATES / EUROPE     With corporate fat cats’ earnings increasingly in the spotlight, particularly in these credit-challenged times, it appears that CEO remuneration packages vary markedly depending on which side of the pond they are on. According to ...

UNITED STATES     Clean energy technologies are key to the US's future economic prosperity. US president George W. Bush may not have signed the Kyoto Protocol for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but with consumers feeling the pinch of high ...

UNITED STATES     Gas complaint: Exxon Mobil says growing consumption is pumping up its profits. A long-simmering debate boiled over last month after Exxon Mobil reported the highest earnings ever by an American corporation, topping its own record set ...

CANADA When Canada’s dollar reached parity with the US dollar, it was cause for national celebration. For the country’s corporations, still reeling from the credit crunch, the muscular currency is a very mixed blessing.         In recent ...

United States     Gardner: More companies are signing up to going green. Global investors, institutions and corporates are increasingly looking to improve their sustainability profile, according to a report by the Worldwatch Institute released in January. The report, State ...

Canada       Carney: Taking control at a difficult time.       Mark Carney took the reins as governor of the Bank of Canada from David Dodge on February 1, at a time when the central bank has ...

UNITED STATES       Gardner: More companies are signing up to going green. Global investors, institutions and corporates are increasingly looking to improve their sustainability profile, according to a report by the Worldwatch Institute released in January. The report, ...

UNITED KINGDOM     Miliband: The European Union should ontinue to expand to the east The United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, says that the European Union should gradually expand further into Eastern Europe, including Russia, as well as into ...

FOCUS / CANADA FOR SALE   The buyout boom of Canadian companies is stirring intense controversy and throwing a harsh spotlight on the role of corporate executives.   As the selloff of Canada’s biggest and best-known companies reaches record levels, ...

UNITED STATES     Hank Paulson: Eager for Uncle Sam to avoid bailing out major American banks. The United States Treasury in effect told the big American banks last month to clean up their own mess and not to look ...

UNITED STATES     Nikola Swann: External imbalances put the dollar at risk of ratings downgrade. Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Nikola Swann says the dollar’s preeminent role in the world cannot be taken for granted. The greenback is still ...

UNITED KINGDOM/UNITED STATES     Divett: Offshoring IT involves hidden costs. Offshoring information technology services is an emotive subject that incites mixed responses from most companies. Although Wall Street financial firms were among the early adopters of outsourcing, sending their ...

CANADA/UNITED STATES Piling up: The loonie posts record gains against the US dollar. Record prices for Canadian commodities have combined with a surge in foreign investment, robust job growth and the US Federal Reserve’s recent interest rate cut to send ...

UNITED STATES     Alan Greenspan: Introducing his own turbulence to the markets. Talk about good timing. Alan Greenspan’s memoirs, entitled The Age of Turbulence, topped the bestseller list at Amazon.com last month as volatility continued to rattle global financial ...

United states     Bernanke under pressure as he fends off calls for a rate cut. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke didn’t exactly call out the helicopters and dump bundles of money on Wall Street last month to keep the ...

United states     Patrick Taylor: No "perfect solution" for fraud prevention Five years ago, in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) was enacted to prevent financial fraud. However, a recent survey of more than 80 ...

United states     Most companies take out some form of professional indemnity, liability and business insurance, but the latest addition to companies’ insurance portfolios is property terrorism insurance. Such products are becoming increasingly prevalent among larger to mid-size US ...

THE AMERICAS The US administration’s assertion that its dollar policy remains unchanged did little to clarify exactly what that policy is, analysts say. President Bush’s comments in early June that the dollar was devalued inappropriately and that the administration’s policy ...