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Europe’s challenge in finding the right balance in digital regulations

It has long been the vision of European policymakers to make the continent a centre of digital innovation to rival the US west coast and China. With almost half a billion people across some of the world’s most advanced economies, there is no inherent reason why Europe should lag behind. The EU is about to...

US lawmakers finally join the EU approach and ask for breaking up Big Tech

  • US
If the power of Big Tech is the problem, what is the answer? In Washington, members of the House antitrust committee have been pondering three possible responses: throw more resources at enforcing existing antitrust rules: tighten up the laws to give the enforcers more teeth; or design entirely new regulatory frameworks with the most powerful...

Big Tech Stocks’ current valuations make a grim prospect for the future

  • US
Despite the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the S&P 500 index is up 6.5% this year. Apple has a market capitalization of 2 trillion dollar, Facebook is worth 762 billion dollar and Tesla is valued at 394 billion dollar. Even Nikola, a maker of battery and hydrogen trucks that is yet to...

EU centralizes market oversight in targeting ‘stable coins’

The EU has embarked on a push for greater centralized supervision of financial markets, setting out an oversight regime for crypto assets and pledging to learn from the German Wirecard scandal. The European Commission last month proposed a regulatory system for so-called stablecoins, such as the Facebook-backed Libra initiative, and other cryptocurrencies, saying that the...

Which presidential candidate is the stock market looking for?

For months the S&P 500 rose this year - despite a deadly pandemic, the resulting economic devastation and the rise of a Democratic Party increasingly sympathetic to democratic socialism. Then, last month, with Joe Biden doing well in the polls, stock prices finally stumbled. It polls continue to point to a Biden victory in the...

Let’s talk about the oil price crash

The oil price crash of March 2020 will globally in our opinion not last for too long. As in 2014, when the oil price dropped below 50 US-Dollar from 110 US-Dollar in a few weeks, this one will trigger a temporary collapse of the US shale industry. Unless the coronavirus outbreak causes Armageddon, cheap...

India is getting prepared on cracking Cryptos

Confidence in the Indian financial system has been breaking down for some time. Instead of trying to restore trust, it may be time to require less of it – with the help of an official rupee cryptocurrency. The last straw was the collapse of corporate lender Yes Bank Ltd., which failed in slow motion in...

Central Banks need a new pandora box for financial markets

The list of reasons that the US Federal Reserve shouldn’t have cut interest rates is long. Lower rates in our opinion will do nothing to address the root cause of potential economic distress, namely supply disruptions and halted economic activity because of the coronavirus. It comes as the Fed is already low on firepower...

India’s fiscal budget needs to be improved to prevent a further slowdown

The Indian middle class will count a few rupees, bank deposits will get a little security, and privatization enthusiasts will chew on a new player in the market. But other than high-sounding grandiose statements, Indian Budget 2020 has delivered no expectations. This was preordained, of course. If anyone is feeling disappointed, clearly that person...

The Dominance of Big Tech – No End in Sight:

When Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said recently that revenues at the company had soared past 161 billion US-Dollar last year, it was a stark reminder of the widening gap between tech’s wealthiest outfits and the rest of the industry. And there is in our opinion little reason to believe that this will change. In...

How Big Tech like Amazon determine their power – start-ups are helpless

Elastic, a software start-up in Amsterdam, was rapidly building its business and had grown to 100 employees. Then Amazon came along. In 2015, Amazon's cloud computing arm announced it was copying Elastic’s free software tool, which people use to search and analyze data, and would sell it as a paid service. Amazon went ahead even...

Private Equity in der Golfregion kommt wieder auf den richtigen Weg

Seit 2014 sieht sich die Private Equity (PE)-Branche am Golf im Zuge der makroökonomischen Verlangsamung in Verbindung mit der Volatilität des Ölpreises und dem steigenden geopolitischen Risiko mit Herausforderungen konfrontiert. Der Zusammenbruch des größten Buyout-Unternehmens der Region (Abraaj) hat die Situation noch verschärft und das Vertrauen institutioneller Investoren deutlich geschwächt. Infolgedessen blieb die Mittelbeschaffung...

Private Equity in the Gulf comes back on track

Since 2014, the Gulf's private equity (PE) industry has been facing challenges in the wake of macroeconomic slowdown combined with oil price volatility and rising geopolitical risk. To top it off, the collapse of region’s biggest buyout firm (Abraaj) worsened the situation and significantly eroded institutional investor confidence. As a result, fund raising remained...

Demand for flexible office space in the Middle East is picking up

The past five years have seen a fundamental shift in which worldwide office space is used by occupiers, which has changed the way that office space is being delivered by the real estate industry. The growth of flexible offices - defined as “office space provided on a short-term lease or license” - has been...

One way to save the euro is by turning it into a digital currency

When European economic weakness turns into recession, “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”- which will apply to the Eurozone countries. Increasing economic divergence will put strains on the Eurozone that could - in a worse case - lead to its collapse. The European Monetary Union (EMU) project has failed to reach...

Why the Entrepreneur Ecosystem in the UAE (United Arab Emirates) is thriving

A better understanding of the geography of entrepreneurship has been increasingly recognized as an important element in explaining variations in economic development patterns in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, the Middle East and elsewhere. That said, the entrepreneurship process indeed tends to begin with individuals that possess unique personal attributes and have a penchant for risk-taking...

Silicon Valley start – ups are losing the “cool” factor

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Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures, recently published a blog post titled “The Great Public Market Reckoning“. In it, he argued that the narrative that had driven start-up hype and valuations for the past decade was now falling apart. His post quickly ricocheted across Silicon Valley. Other venture capitalists soon weighed...

Silicon Valley’s success formula will change

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The story of WeWork, Uber, and similar pieces larded with schadenfreude about a raft of companies backed by a mixture of venture, growth, Petro, hedge and mutual fund dollars, suggests that Silicon Valley has only one recipe for success. Like all soundbites, it is arresting but far from reality. The popular narrative is it straight...

The Great Indian Growth Story Is On Hold For Now

Until recently, Indians had gotten used to taking economic growth for granted. After a decade of annual growth averaging over 9%, India's economy weathered the post - 2008 worldwide recession and grew at a still impressive rate of 7% until 2014 -15. Nothing, it seemed, could stop the gravy train from rolling on....

4 tech giants, one virtual war: Power

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Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have been the envy of corporate America, admired for their size, influence and remarkable growth. Now that success is attracting a different kind of spotlight. In Washington, Brussels and beyond, regulators and lawmakers are investigating whether the four technology companies have used their size and wealth to quash competition...

India hopes for further growth through monetary policy

It's almost universally expected in India that the central bank's monetary policy committee will lower interest rates further after the recent cut. Many expect it to keep cutting until the policy rate hits 5% by the end of the year; it was 6% in June, and the committee cut it by unexpected 0.35 percentage...

Global Economies edge into downturn

As President Donald Trump intensifies his trade war with China, and as factories slow in major industrial nations, world commerce is deteriorating rapidly, a perilous development that threatens the health of the global economy. Most economists still predict that a global recession remains unlikely, even us growth slows. But in our opinion the dangers...

World Economic Growth – let’s say goodbye

Global markets were seized by fear last month that trade wars were slowing growth in Germany, China and the United States. But the story here in our opinion is far bigger than President Trump and his tariffs. The post war miracle is over - please do understand that. since the financial crisis of 2008, the...

European growth sustain a recession of Germany’s economy?

But Ms. Lagarde will have to consider what the central bank can do if the situation gets worse. When Germany’s official statistics office reported that the economy shrank 0.1% in the second quarter, shock waves rippled through stock markets around the world. The reaction reflected the degree to which Germany sets the tone for the...

US – China Trade Conflict Part II: For the U.S. pursuing a currency war with China involves big risks

When the United States declared China a currency manipulator recently, long-building trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies spread to the combustible realm of currencies, with potentially huge consequences for the global financial system should the escalation continue. By beginning of August, the escalation has reached a stage where central banks in India,...

How Africa is setting an example for the Arab World

Arab leaders and citizens do not often look at Africa for inspiration. For decades, the “Dark Continent” has been beset by civil wars, military coups, famine and recurrent outbreaks of endemic diseases. Millions of lives have been lost and economies destroyed. But Africa is weaking up and moving forward and for the first time...

India’s digital leap will reshape all the sectors in the upcoming decade

India is taking a great digital leap. Having reaped substantial rewards from building up its core digital sectors, such as information technology and business process management, the country starts now seizing new digital opportunities in many more sectors such as agriculture, education, energy, financial services, health care, and logistics. These opportunities in our opinion...

A clash of vision for the Uber I.P.O. – the SoftBank Game

Uber's initial public offering - the biggest in a year of blockbusters - is yet another chance for Uber and its detractors to sell their competing ideas of what this company represents. As it heads toward a valuation of about 90 billion US-Dollar- nearly the combined value of General Motors and FedEx - Uber...

India is pushing for greater electric mobility

Making its presence felt in the global electric mobility market, India announced recently that it would offer 1.4 billion USD in subsidies for both buyers and manufacturers of electric vehicles and impose higher import tariffs to spur domestic companies to build vehicles. The government aims for 30% of its public transport to be electric...

Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) inaugurated in the UAE (United Arab Emirates) – Cranking up Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities to meet the needs of the future

The UAE Government in cooperation with the World Economic Forum (WEF) inaugurated recently the Center for Fourth Iindustrial Revolution in the UAE at AREA 2071, Emirates Towers in Dubai, to be the first of its kind in the region in the fifth globally, after the United States, Japan, India and China. The center comes...

Global economics and a downgrading growth forecast

Last year looked like the time when President Trump had delivered on his promises to strengthen the economy. His tax cuts appeared to juice growth above 3%, a pace The United States had not topped since 2005. But recently the Commerce Department revised 2018 growth downward to below 3%, even as forecasts for 2019...

Do we need to get prepared for a possible China – led world order?

In 1946, diplomat and historian George F. Kennan writing as Mr. X, sent an 8000 - word telegram to the State Department about Joseph Stalin's aggressive foreign policy. He warned “there would be no permanent peaceful coexistence” between the United States and Soviet Union, and his analysis provided an influential underpinning for America's Cold...

The Future of Entrepreneurship has to change – Education should turn into a human right – Calvin·Farel and Inventive Ventures’ responsible use of technology in the Middle East to hopefully transform millions of lives

The world has started 2019 in a turbulent mood. While global companies have enough cash to weather the economic winter and reinvest for growth, small businesses and entrepreneurs are much more vulnerable and survival will be a priority, especially in the region of the Middle East. Looking through the exhibit, what struck us most was...

Inventive Ventures through its MembersClub and jumpstarter forms a new platform named “brandmatch.ae” to provide young talents of the Middle East, especially woman, to participate in the multimillion-dollar businesses of vloggers, influencers and brands

When done right, vlogger and influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach relevant audiences and deliver results, which is why it will continue to spiral into a multibillion dollar industry over the next five to seven years. At the same time gender equity and equal pay for men and women in the workforce is not...

It is time to regulate the technology giants and their platforms

The US Senate Intelligence Committee’s grilling of the tech giants Facebook, Google and Twitter in beginning of November told us something we already knew: Russia manipulated the US election results. Only the scale of the effort, which reached roughly half of the US population, was a surprise. It also told us something that we knew, but had forgotten: industry self-regulation rarely works....

The Digital Future of Asia – Control or no Control – the Power Game and what you did not know about it

When Xi Jinping strode out in the Great Wall of the People five years ago as China’s new leader, his tight smile barely hid the atmosphere of smoldering crisis. The Communist Party elite had been battered by infighting and scandals involving power grabs, bribery and even murder. Military commanders and state security chieftains-the guardians of one-party-rule had grown grossly corrupt. ...

EU Court to rule on our Personal Data

The EU’s highest court has been asked to decide whether the way Facebook and other technology companies transfer user’s pictures, emails and others personal data to the US should be outlawed, in a decision that will have huge implications for a sector. Judges in Ireland, where Facebook and other tech companies have their European headquarters, have finally asked the European Court...