Search Results for: International business

The European Union (EU) has been busy chiselling the regulatory edifice of its much-vaunted European Capital Markets Union (CMU), but this growing legal framework has yet to deliver the deep capital pools that its framers envisaged.

Indeed, speaking at the European Banking Congress, in Frankfurt, on November 17, European Central Bank (ECB) president Christine Lagarde, bemoaned the lack of available EU capital (1):

“Today, European start-ups attract less than half the funding of their US counterparts, while the volume of investments in scale-ups in the United States is more than four times greater than in Europe,” she stressed.…

Fraud has been booming since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the disruption of established living and working patterns, but experts warn that companies and consumers should expect more swindles in 2024, as technology develops, and scams become more sophisticated.…

The International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) has predicted that the chocolate industry will continue to face cocoa supply deficits, with its latest quarterly assessment predicting that for 2022/3, there will be 99,000 tonnes more grindings than cocoa production. As a result, global stocks will fall to 1.744 million tonnes, amidst declines in output from key production hubs Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.…

With consumers becoming increasingly health conscious worldwide, demand for vegan chocolate, replacing dairy ingredients with plant-based materials, is growing fast.

According to US-based Grand View Research, the global vegan confectionery market – dominated by chocolate – is anticipated to generate USD2.62 billion in annual revenues by 2030, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.9% from 2023’s USD1.23 billion.…

The Indonesian garment sector, already reeling from a decline in international orders, is facing a double whammy: a surge in illegal textile imports that is undercutting local producers and increasing pressure for sustainable production.

According to the Indonesian Fibre and Filament Yarn Producers Association (APSyFi – Asosiasi Produsen Serat dan Benang Filament Indonesia), the value of illegal textile and textile products, notably clothing imports into Indonesia last year (2022) reached USD2.94 billion.

Stellantis members of Canadian autoworkers union Unifor have backed the final D3 Canada agreement secured in this year’s contract negotiation round. This means a three-year deal will now apply to 8,200 workers in Canada until September 2026. The union said 60% of members at Stellantis’ Brampton and Windsor assembly plants; and its Etobicoke Casting Plant – all in Ontario – approved the tentative agreement stuck last Monday (Oct 30).…

More than 400 organisations from 64 jurisdictions have signed a declaration, committing themselves to advancing the adoption or use of the ISSB’s S2 climate impact reporting standard as the climate global baseline. This came on December 4, during the UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP28) meeting in Dubai.…

There is no formal blueprint telling universities and colleges how they can encourage skills and practices promoting sustainability, as the world grapples with an ever more demanding impacts from climate change. However, a team of experts in the UK has developed a thoughtful set of guidance, designed to aid higher education institutions in weaving sustainability into their coursework, research and operations.…

Auto parts manufacturers worldwide are assessing the impact on their businesses of the shift to electric vehicles (EVs) from internal combustion engines (ICE), given EVs need fewer components, reducing demand. Most assessments say that there are about 20 moving parts in an electric engine, compared to 2,000 in an ICE (1).…

The New Zealand Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has called for comments on planned reductions to allowable lead levels in paints, and in art materials such as chalk, crayons, and felt-tip pens.

The country’s current lead level limit for paint is 0.1% (1,000 parts per million/ppm) and the proposed changes would reduce this to 0.009% (90ppm), in line with countries including Australia, Canada and the United States, the EPA said in a note.…