The writer is a former senior adviser on AI at the Federal Trade Commission and managing director of the AI Now Institute. Amba Kak also contributed to this article If AI is poised to occupy an increasingly central place in our digital infrastructure, it’s time to think long and hard about who will control it.
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Chinese insurer Ping An will demand HSBC boost dividends to pre-Covid levels and commit to regularly reviewing its structure at its annual meeting next month, following calls to break off its Asian business. HSBC’s largest shareholder is planning to support resolutions proposed by a group of retail investors on dividends and structural reform, which includes
‘Banking crisis!’ is back in the headlines, and with it a debate about what role banks should really play in an economy, and what should be left to markets. With that in mind, the New York Federal Reserve’s economists have trawled through the history books to find evidence of why they say a “narrow banking”
The UK parliament’s standards commissioner has opened an investigation into Prime Minister Rishi Sunak over allegations that he failed to declare a financial interest correctly. The investigation, which became public on Monday, comes after complaints that Sunak failed when discussing increased funding for childcare to mention that his wife, Akshata Murthy, held shares in Koru
Eswar Prasad has been thinking about China’s economy longer than most. The Cornell professor’s new paper — which examines whether the Chinese economy has gone from “miracle to malady” — makes for timely reading amid fears the Asian superpower has fallen into a classic middle-income trap that could morph into something more dangerous. Prasad’s basic
European stocks rose at the open on Monday as traders balanced their concerns over a potential recession and its implications for interest rates against better than expected results from several of the biggest banks in the US. Europe’s region-wide Stoxx 600 added 0.4 per cent, Germany’s Dax also rose 0.4 per cent and London’s FTSE
While Joe Biden was on a sentimental journey to Ireland, Xi Jinping was busy in Beijing. Following a high-profile visit by President Emmanuel Macron of France, the Chinese leader played host to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil. The messaging to emerge from the Lula-Xi summit was congenial to China and disturbing to
Sega Sammy, the Japanese gamesmaker behind the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has launched a €706mn ($776mn) offer for Rovio Entertainment, the Finnish group that gave the world Angry Birds. The €9.25 a share offer values the mobile games pioneer at almost 20 per cent below the price at which Rovio went public five and a
Global regulators are considering imposing tougher rules on smaller lenders and requiring all banks to ready themselves for faster runs on deposits as officials search for lessons from the recent turmoil that led to the failure of several midsized US institutions. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which sets global standards, promised in March to
You might think that bank regulators would be feeling a little jittery these days — in short order, three US lenders and the globally systemic Credit Suisse became victims of a not-so-mini-banking crisis that all too closely resembled the chaotic collapses of 2007-08. Instead, there is a quiet sense of satisfaction. The failures were contained
The 2008 financial crisis was a calamity for many, but for David Cameron and George Osborne, then leaders of the UK’s Conservative opposition party, it was also an opportunity. As the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent shockwaves through global finance and the UK nationalised several banks, Osborne devised a plan to dismantle the regulatory structure
Immigration is back, in the US at least. Over the past two and a half years, immigration into the American labour market has increased by 4mn workers, and the working age immigrant population has now finally reached its pre-pandemic trend level. This is likely to be a central factor in strong employment growth, particularly in
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is in a hurry. Since he took office for a historic third term just over 100 days ago, the Brazilian leader has been desperate to stamp his mark on the presidency and undo the rightward shift that Latin America’s largest country took under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. In his four-year
The writer is a professor in the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University and author of ‘Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World’ Amid all the recent turmoil in energy markets, a significant transaction went largely under the radar: the January 2023 acquisition of a controlling share of
India: Several three-day meetings begin under India’s G20 presidency: the health working group gathers in Goa, the digital economy working group meets in Hyderabad and chief agricultural scientists convene in Varanasi. The two-day G20 Space Economy Leaders Meeting begins in Shillong. Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels to Somnath to inaugurate the Saurashtra Tamil Sangamam, a
China is starting to target western interests in the country after five years of snowballing trade and technology restrictions spearheaded by the US under presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Over the past two months, Chinese officials have slapped new sanctions on US weapons companies Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, launched an investigation into US chipmaker
The Bank of England is considering a major overhaul of its deposit guarantee scheme, including boosting the amount covered for businesses and forcing banks to pre-fund the system to a greater extent to ensure faster access to cash when a lender collapses. The UK’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme is being urgently reviewed after the rapid
China’s $1tn Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure finance programme has been hit by spiralling bad loans, with more than $78bn-worth of borrowing turning sour over the past three years. The scheme made China the world’s largest bilateral creditor, but the figures suggest it has become a financial millstone for Beijing and its biggest banks. About
The fighting that has erupted in Sudan between the country’s armed forces and a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces pits the president against his vice-president in a struggle for control of Africa’s third-largest country. Both men had emerged as leaders of the transitional government after a 2019 coup that ousted Omar al-Bashir,
The wave of strikes that has swept the UK is hitting the economy harder than initially expected — and the disruption is set to continue, as health and teaching unions lay plans for industrial action that could stretch until Christmas. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt argues that while the impact of NHS strikes on patients is “incredibly
The writer is a former CIA analyst and author of ‘Damascus Station’ At first glance, the long-rumbling Syrian conflict and the front-page war in Ukraine have little in common. The former is a multi-sided civil war fought in the Middle East, while the latter is a contest between states at the gates of Europe. But