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Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus: Crisis and Recovery

3 December 2024By Daniela Filip, Klaus Masuch, Ralph Setzer and Vilém Valenta At the height of the financial crisis Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus needed help. The international assistance came under the condition of economic adjustment aiming to restore financial stability, debt sustainability and growth. How did the four countries recover from their crises?Many euro area countries experienced fiscal troubles and financial stress during the crisis years, especially during the…

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Professor Joya Chatterji awarded Wolfson History Prize 2024

This year’s Wolfson History Prize has been awarded to Joya Chatterji, Emeritus Professor of South Asian History and Fellow of Trinity College, for her book Shadows At Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century, first published in 2023.The book charts the story of the subcontinent from the British Raj through independence and partition to the forging of the modern nations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Chatterji’s history pushes back against standard narratives…

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Study shows that chimpanzees perform the same complex behaviours that have brought humans success

Our results suggest that the sequences of actions that wild chimpanzees use to perform their tool-use behaviours share many properties with those of humans, and so likely evolved before the last common ancestors of humans and chimps. Lead researcher Dr Elliot Howard-SpinkMany human behaviours are more complex than those of other animals, involving the production of elaborate sequences (such as spoken language, or tool manufacturing). These sequences include the ability to…

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Oxford University to lead AI security research through new national laboratory partnership

Announced at the recent NATO Cyber Defence Conference, LASR will bring together industry, academic, and government experts to boost Britain’s cyber resilience and support growth. Leading researchers from Oxford University’s Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences (MPLS) Division and Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre will work alongside partner institutions, government bodies, and commercial stakeholders.By bringing together diverse expertise and perspectives, LASR will take a comprehensive and strategic approach towards addressing the complex…

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For major U.S. cities, the ‘donut effect’ persists

What is the shelf life of a freshly baked donut? Two days, tops.But when it comes to an entirely different kind of donut – one that Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom described early in the pandemic when he measured the exodus of people from city centers to city suburbs – there appears to be no expiration date.That’s the key takeaway of Bloom’s research of the “donut effect,” a term he helped…

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No certification for Boal investors – Fiduciary duty ruled individual issue

The evolving landscape of fiduciary duties in the investment industry Since the Client-Focused Reforms were introduced in 2019, the investment industry has been closely following whether these reforms will result in Courts imposing fiduciary duties on registrants. Against this backdrop, the proposed class action in Boal v. International Capital Management Inc. et al. (Boal) has been closely watched as a test case. Starting in 2021 and culminating in a 2023…

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Make Them Laugh, Sell Them Stuff

Then there’s "Hump Day", in which a talking camel excitedly asks office workers what day it is. No prizes for guessing what the correct answer is. The 2013 campaign, by auto insurance firm GEICO, did not just increase brand awareness and engagement. It became a cultural phenomenon. The clincher? The simplicity and relatability of the joke. Another hit campaign latches onto the fact that hunger can make us cranky. In "You're Not…

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Enterprise technology’s next chapter: Four gen AI shifts that will reshape business technology

Companies often overestimate the impact of short-term changes in technology and underestimate the effect of long-term changes. This well-known dynamic is particularly relevant for generative AI (gen AI) in enterprise technology. Today’s many bold predictions about its impact on enterprise technology often focus on shorter-term horizons (with immediate focus on efficiency and productivity in two to three use cases) rather than on more forward-looking shifts and implications. Our recent discussions…

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Risks of Regional Wars in the Middle East: A Perspective from India

As tensions in the Middle East continue to escalate, India has found itself navigating a complex web of economic, strategic, and security concerns. What began as conflict between Israel and Hamas now risks expanding into a broader regional conflagration involving Iran and its network of allies. India’s significant ties with key Middle Eastern countries mean that the stakes are high for New Delhi. In order to safeguard its interests, India…

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AI for IT modernization: Faster, cheaper, better

At the heart of virtually every large organization is a massive anchor slowing a business down: the tech debt found in legacy IT systems. Often built decades ago, these large systems form the technical backbone of companies and functions across almost every sector. As much as 70 percent of the software used by Fortune 500 companies was developed 20 or more years ago (see sidebar “What are legacy systems, and…

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Four Leadership Loads That Keep Getting Heavier

Topics Column Our expert columnists offer opinion and analysis on important issues facing modern businesses and managers. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images Feeling emotionally drained at work? Is your patience exhausted? Your energy low? If so, you’re showing clinical markers of burnout. And you’re not alone. In a January 2024 mental health survey conducted by NAMI, more than half of all managers…

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OFCCP Says New Monthly Employment Data Reports Will Start With March 2025

Quick Hits OFCCP announced that its new Form CC-257 required monthly employment data reporting for covered federal contractors and subcontractors will launch in March 2025 and be due by April 15, 2025. Reports will cover a calendar month and be due the fifteenth of the following month unless the fifteenth falls on a weekend or holiday, on which the report will be due the next business day. The new reports…

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Conciliation and mediation: The way forward for the WTO?

Over the course of his first term in office, President Trump made no secret of his skepticism towards the World Trade Organization (WTO). In 2018, he threatened to withdraw the United States from the WTO if it did not “shape up”.  During a White House press briefing in September of 2020, he stated that “the WTO, as far as I’m concerned, was created to suck money and jobs out of…

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The Good, the Bad, and the Unpredictable in Trump’s Cabinet

This commentary originally appeared in Fortune. President-elect Donald Trump caught many by surprise last week when he announced plans to install far-reaching tariffs of 25% on Mexico and Canada and increase existing tariffs on goods imported from China by an additional 10% on his first day in office. During the campaign, “tariff man” had promised to enact such broad-based tariffs to increase federal revenues and punish countries for taking advantage…

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Reimagining procurement

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity.Is it time for a procurement (r)evolution? Mauro Erriquez: Dominique, thank you for being with us today. It’s amazing that we have an opportunity to talk about the future of procurement. Many of my clients are saying they have never seen such a challenging period like the last two years. Is your view the same? Dominique Lebigot: Yes, there has been this pandemic,…

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Researchers deal a blow to theory that Venus once had liquid water on its surface

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, studied the chemical composition of the Venusian atmosphere and inferred that its interior is too dry today for there ever to have been enough water for oceans to exist at its surface. Instead, the planet has likely been a scorching, inhospitable world for its entire history.The results, reported in the journal Nature Astronomy, have implications for understanding Earth’s uniqueness, and for the search…

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New datasets will train AI models to think like scientists

The initiative, called Polymathic AI, uses technology like that powering large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. But instead of ingesting text, the project’s models learn using scientific datasets from across astrophysics, biology, acoustics, chemistry, fluid dynamics and more, essentially giving the models cross-disciplinary scientific knowledge.“These datasets are by far the most diverse large-scale collections of high-quality data for machine learning training ever assembled for these fields,”…

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Novo Nordisk announces £18.5 million of funding for a further 20 Postdoctoral Fellows

Leading global healthcare company Novo Nordisk has deepened its partnership with the University of Oxford by announcing £18.5 million of funding for a further 20 Postdoctoral Fellows in this prestigious scientific research programme, over the next nine years. This expanded collaboration also introduces an innovative ‘Springboard Fellowship’, which offers selected fellows an extra two years of funding to further advance their research and professional development. The flagship Novo Nordisk –…

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Settling the Debate on Whether Green Investing Pays ‌‌

Can green investors help contribute to climate-change solutions and simultaneously earn a higher return? While roughly 60% of asset managers who responded to a 2019 survey expected their environmentally and socially aligned investment portfolios to outperform the market over the following five years, academics report starkly divergent findings when it comes to whether investors are right to hold this expectation.‌ Yale SOM’s Theis Jensen was drawn to this thorny question…

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Unifying data and strategy: Citizens Bank’s path to Agile enterprise management

Company Details Industry: Banking Company size: 23,000+ employees Project Scope: Data Governance team Services provided: Enterprise Technology and Financial Management; Apptio Targetprocess implementation and optimisation Executive summary Citizens Bank was grappling with a tangle of disconnected systems and opaque processes. Cprime Elabor8’s experts helped align IT with Finance and open a fresh perspective for data-driven decision-making by implementing and optimising their tooling and processes. The challenge Citizens Bank was navigating…

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Supreme Court of Canada: Landmark decision on corporate attribution and transfers at undervalue

On Oct. 11, 2024, the Supreme Court of Canada (the SCC) released its decision in Aquino v. Bondfield Construction Co. – the first case in which it has addressed the doctrine of corporate attribution in the context of insolvency proceedings. In particular, the SCC considered the way in which the doctrine interacts with section 96 of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (the BIA), also known as the “transfer at undervalue”…

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Emotional Discussion About Industrial Electricity: How Expensive Is Switzerland?

Are high electricity prices putting pressure on Swiss industry? In recent weeks, some industries, such as steel manufacturers, have raised concerns about a loss of competitiveness. The owner of Stahl Gerlafingen noted that electricity costs in Switzerland are roughly five times higher than in France. Public data on electricity prices should be interpreted cautiously, because industrial groups can buy their electricity freely on the market. For example, companies that secured…

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New Opportunities in a Multipolar World: Russia, the Global South, and the Global Majority

On November 29, 2024, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion titled “Russia, the Global South, and the Global Majority.” Moderator Timofei Bordachev called the topic both timely and important. According to him, interaction with the countries of the global majority and the Global South is of great importance for Russia in the new system of external relations. In addition, these countries themselves now have a much greater influence on…

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Court of Appeal finds the British Columbia Securities Commission treated the appellants unfairly: No sheltering behind deference

On November 15, 2024, in Morabito v. British Columbia (Securities Commission), the Court of Appeal for British Columbia allowed the appeals from a decision of the British Columbia Securities Commission because the procedure adopted by the Commission panel hearing the appellants’ abuse of process applications denied the appellants a fair hearing. The Court’s decision confirmed that while deference is generally owed to administrative tribunals such as the Securities Commission, the…

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Business Email Compromise Scams: What They Are, and How to Avoid Them

According to the FBI, Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams often involve the spoofing of a legitimate, known email address or the use of a nearly identical address to appear as someone known to or trusted by the victim. Real Estate Wire Fraud is a subcategory of BEC, in which criminal actors target individuals or companies executing large wires related to real estate transactions. From 2020 to 2022, there was a…

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Recent changes to extended producer responsibility in Canada

Mandatory extended producer responsibility (EPR) systems continue to roll-out in Canadian provinces, making producers responsible for the products and product packaging they supply to consumers. The rollouts include new fees, third party verification of data, significant penalties for non-compliance, and expansion of scope.  Most provinces have now enacted EPR legislation, except for Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nunavut and Northwest Territories. As we have discussed in previous articles, EPR…

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8080 Books – Microsoft

As fans of books, especially in their physical format, it is our great pleasure to launch 8080 Books, an imprint of Microsoft. Our first title, No Prize for Pessimism, is authored by Sam Schillace, deputy chief technology officer at Microsoft, and is available today. Our second title, Platform Mindset, by Marcus Fontoura, will be available later this year.  Computing has become an essential ingredient to almost every endeavor on our…

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Is Working Yourself “To The Bone” Ever Worth It?

In some sectors, workers are constantly pushed to extremes, not unlike stunt performers whose bodies are treated as tools – stretched and sacrificed to meet professional demands. Notably, similar patterns are observed in soul-sucking, albeit prized, careers such as consulting, investment banking and other financial services. The recent deaths of employees from Bank of America and Ernst & Young resulting from overwork reignited the furore arising from the alleged 100-hour…

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Austin Calling: As Texas Absorbs Influx of Residents, Rekor Taps NVIDIA Technology for Roadway Safety, Traffic Relief

Austin is drawing people to jobs, music venues, comedy clubs, barbecue and more. But with this boom has come a big city blues: traffic jams. Rekor, which offers traffic management and public safety analytics, has a front-row seat to the increasing traffic from an influx of new residents migrating to Austin. Rekor works with the Texas Department of Transportation, which has a $7 billion project addressing this, to help mitigate…

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New Ruling Says Engagement Ring Must be Returned to Donor if the Engagement Fails

In a diversion from longstanding Massachusetts law, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) has adopted the modern trend that following a failed engagement, regardless of which party breaks off the engagement, the engagement ring must be returned to the donor. The decision overturns the Commonwealth’s previously settled rule that if the engagement failed, then the engagement ring should go to the party who was not responsible for terminating the engagement.…

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Take Two: Proposed Amendments to Alberta’s PPCLA and the PWA​ (Bill 30)

Background On Nov. 4, 2024, the Minister of Service tabled Bill 30, the Service Alberta Statutes Amendment Act, 2024 (Bill 30). Bill 30 introduces proposed amendments to Alberta’s Prompt Payment and Construction Lien Act (the PPCLA) and the Public Works Act (the PWA) that could result in changes to the province’s construction industry. Bill 30 presents an interesting opportunity for the Alberta Legislature to provide additional clarification around the adjudication…

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Watermarked LLMs Offer Benefits, but Leading Strategies Come With Tradeoffs

It's increasingly difficult to discern between content generated by humans and artificial intelligence. To help create more transparency around this issue and detect when AI-generated content is used maliciously, computer scientists are researching ways to label content created by large language models (LLMs). One solution: using watermarks. A new study(opens in new window) from School of Computer Science(opens in new window) researchers looks at the tradeoffs of some of the…

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How a European growth company kept on trucking through market setbacks

For sennder, a leading European digital road freight forwarder, challenges have been catalysts for growth. Founded in 2015, the Berlin-based trucking company has rapidly transformed the European industry by digitalizing road logistics. Although sennder’s growth has been explosive, it hasn’t come without hurdles. However, thanks to a culture of learning, transparency, accountability, and team spirit, the company has used setbacks as opportunities to scale its operations, secure significant funding, and…

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OCMT chokes on Bitfarms 15 per cent poison pill

The Ontario Capital Markets Tribunal (OCMT) cease traded the Bitfarms Ltd. (Bitfarms) shareholder rights plan pursuant to its public interest powers. The OCMT’s decision found the Plan “undermined, in a real and substantial way, the principles underlying the take-over bid regime.” The reasons for the decision provide important insights into the use of shareholder rights plans to prevent hostile take-over bids. What you need to know The purpose of the…

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Transmitting an Unwritten Culture: Hermès HR Leader Sharon MacBeath

Topics Culture Champions Building a healthy culture is one of the most important — and hardest — leadership jobs. These articles, based on a webinar series and research by Donald Sull and CultureX, share actionable advice from leaders whose cultures produced exceptional business results and a world-class employee experience. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Aleksandar Savic Hermès is one of the world’s most admired brands, renowned for its…

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Ontario Cyber Security Standard: Impact on licensed electricity transmitters and distributors

On Oct. 1, 2024, amendments to the Ontario Energy Board’s (OEB) Transmission System Code (TSC) and Distribution System Code (DSC, and together, the Codes) came into force. The amendments are intended to facilitate and enhance cyber security readiness, collaboration and innovation in Ontario’s electricity sector. The amendments require licensed electricity transmitters and distributors (utilities) to comply with the new Ontario Cyber Security Standard (the Standard), which lays out cyber security…

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Are Premium Bonds a suitable way to hold your wealth as the prize rate falls?

More than 22 million savers in the UK hold Premium Bonds, hoping to be among the lucky ones who win big in the monthly prize draw. Every £1 you invest in Premium Bonds gives you a single entry into the draw, with a top prize of £1 million. This might make Premium Bonds sound very attractive, but it’s important to remember that only two incredibly fortunate people win £1 million…

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Security, Emancipation, and Hope: Africa and the Middle East Address Turmoil

The Red Sea, between Africa and Asia, plays an essential role in international trade and oil transport. Any disruption or closure due to intensifying conflict in the Middle East would have immediate repercussions for the economies of many African states. For example, countries such as Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya and Egypt rely heavily on this sea route for their imports of essential goods. Closure or disruption would increase logistics costs, making…

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Tax planning for non-doms: how to leverage the temporary repatriation facility in 2025

By Tahir Mahmood and Jonathan Gold | 18 Nov, 2024 A great deal has been written since Rachel Reeves delivered her maiden budget on 30th October. Much of it has focussed on her fiscal policies for raising taxes. Most notably for the UK-based investor community, some of the announcements focused on the non-domiciled regime of taxation have created some highly significant planning opportunities. Opportunity Before April 2025: Navigating the Transition…

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Capturing the generative AI opportunity for the Dutch labor market

The Dutch labor market is strong and evolving: labor force participation is notably high, and unemployment levels are historically low. But ongoing trends, including an aging population and declining productivity growth, are putting the labor market under pressure. Recently, McKinsey projected that labor market tightness could triple by 2030 if the Netherlands maintains current levels of growth in GDP (1.6 percent CAGR) and productivity (0.4 percent CAGR). While traditional automation…

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