The name of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 describes its purpose: slashing the US corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent would result in executives investing the resultant savings into growing their companies, increasing productivity, creating jobs, equalizing wage inequalities. If only the executives were on the same page. Instead, many are funnelling the lion’s share of the windfall into share buybacks, benefiting their investors.
The first week of August saw Facebook announce that it had drawn up proposals with major investment banks and credit-card companies to form data-sharing partnerships. According to the Wall Street Journal(WSJ),
As the landscape of financial services continues to change, it’s critical to stay ahead of the game. ATMs were groundbreaking achievements once upon a time, while more recently, mobile baking was the logical next step in banking’s maturation.
Many bankers love blockchain for its potential to maximize efficiency and productivity while slashing costs and security risks. But the crypto-currencies, such as the (in)famous bitcoin, tied to it? Not so much—at least not across the board. While giving the thumbs up to distributed ledger technology for its advantages in areas such as trade finance, industry leaders are maintaining a wary eye on cryptos, due to disadvantages such as volatility.
Rarely has a technology been met with the excitement and trepidation that AI has. Because artificial intelligence not only matches but can surpass human intelligence, it is exciting as a means to improve speed, save cost and maximize accuracy—but menacing for its potential to displace human workers. Banks are embracing AI for its staggering benefits, while also acknowledging that it creates a few wrinkles that need ironing out.
In March, the US Senate reformed the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act by loosening its tight regulations on smaller financial organizations, welcome relief for those firms that have been struggling for eight long years with requirements targeted for larger, systemically important institutions during the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Most are upbeat about the Senate bill, but how will it fare in the House of Representatives?
As April turned to May, the ongoing economic expansion being experienced by the United States officially became the country’s second longest on record. The period, which began in June 2009 when the world’s biggest economy began to emerge from the Great Recession
In 2017 Russia enjoyed a refreshing return to economic growth and general optimism—until November, when a GDP contraction took analysts by surprise. The question is, was the setback a minor bump in the road on the nation’s path to sustained recovery, or was it a signal that Russia has fallen back into recession after a good but temporary run?
Banking across the globe has been going through a major transformation over the last few years, and this evolution looks set to continue well into 2018, and indeed beyond.
Let’s start with the basics, The Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) was officially published by the European Commission in December 2015 and follows on from the First Payment Services Directive (PSD1), which was implemented in 2009.