Western Europe

UNITED KINGDOM       Darling: Favors a collegiate cross-border regulation system.   Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer Alistair Darling has been criticized for his handling of the Northern Rock bailout, and he is the subject of an Internet campaign ...

  Germany       Ackermann: Global watchdog could prevent market bubbles Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann suggests that creating a global financial sector watchdog could prevent an encore of the global market storm unleashed by the US subprime crisis. ...

Europe     McCreevy: Securitization makes risk get lost, not disappear Six months into the credit crunch, and with banks in other parts of the world such as India still announcing losses from the sub-prime crisis, the European Commission has ...

Germany       Hunt: Legacy airlines lock in customers with "bribery" In a move that is clearly aimed at drumming up corporate business, upstart UK-based business-class-only airline Silverjet has rolled out an innovative loyalty program that takes the benefits ...

UNITED KINGDOM   While many Western banks may be struggling with liquidity and funding issues, Middle Eastern banks, awash with liquidity, are increasingly making their presence felt in Western financial markets. One such bank is Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), whose ...

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 ...

COUNTRY REPORT / CYPRUS Cyprus is hoping that its recent adoption of the euro will help it better survive—and perhaps even thrive—during the coming global turbulence.     Cyprus is hoping that its recent adoption of the euro will help ...

United Kingdom       Davy: Scrapping computers is a huge resource drain       Businesses are facing increasing pressure to consider the environmental impact of their IT purchasing habits as awareness grows of the vast amount of natural ...

EXPANDING HORIZONS ICELAND Iceland is going all out to expand its economy—and the global reach of its banks and corporations.     With a wealthy consumer base that has the sixth-highest per capita GDP in the OECD, 0.8% unemployment, negligible ...

UK / GLOBAL     Growing awareness: Firms see risk management benefits in going green Multinational corporations are waking up to the fact that being “green” is not just for environmentalists. That was the message that came out of a ...

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 ...

EUROPE     Europe's payments landscape is set to change dramatically with market reforms. Banks and companies in other parts of the world are watching with interest as the deadline for radical transformation of the UK and Europe’s cross-border payments ...

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 ...

REGIONAL REPORT / NORDIC BANKING As Nordic banks look further outside their home markets for growth, the rewards—and also the risks—are increasing. Over the past few years, banks in the Nordic region have benefited from highly favorable economic conditions across ...

EUROPE       Desmares: Corporates cool on SEPA. Businesses and public sector organizations operating in Europe have until 2010 to abandon existing national payment instruments and adopt new pan-European credit transfer and direct debits. At least that is the ...

EUROPE     Trichet: Questions investors' reliance on credit ratings. The subprime mortgage crisis in the US has forced the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) to speak out about the new sources of risk being created by the ...

Europe     Stockholm: One of 15 knowledge hubs. With just over two years to go, the European Commission’s Lisbon Agenda initiative to transform Europe into the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010 appears to ...

Global     London: The "epicenter of world commerce" London is perhaps best known for major tourist attractions such as Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge and Madame Tussaud’s, but now it has a new moniker as the epicenter of commerce globally, ...

France     Louis Gallois: Delivering good news Louis Gallois, president and CEO of Airbus, was all smiles at the Paris Air Show last month. Europe’s leading commercial aircraft manufacturer had some good news to announce—deals worth more than $40 ...

SPAIN     Spanish companies, which have been on a huge buying and expansion kick fueled by a strong domestic economy, face growing funding concerns as European Central Bank rate hikes look set to continue. As the economy is slowing, ...