Insights

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ASEAN Insurance Markets: Integration, regulation and trade

Financial Services

Stephen Adams
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ASEAN has a justified reputation for moving slowly on formal commitments to regional economic integration. However our report makes it clear that the real picture is much more complex, and that regional ambitions are driving important changes in the insurance market. Attitudes to foreign capital are evolving, regulatory capacity is uneven but growing and the race to…

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ITA: The tech imports deal with lessons for global trade policy

TMT

Stephen Adams
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On 24 July, the WTO announced the conclusion of negotiations to update and expand the product coverage of the 1997 Information Technology Agreement (ITA). ITA II will eliminate tariffs for over 200 high-tech products – including new generation semiconductors, videogame consoles and global positioning system devices – traded between the 80 signatories of the original…

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TPA 2015: can the US still do trade policy?

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
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The awarding of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) to the Obama White House last week ends a seven year lapse in the special ‘fast track’ authority granted by Congress to the US president on trade policy. It is the latest staging post in a two year fight by the Obama administration to secure the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiation and a number of other US trade deals…

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Cause and FX: the key judgements in the UK Fair and Effective Markets Review

Financial Services

Stephen Adams
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The UK Fair and Effective Markets Review (FEMR) was conducted jointly by the Bank of England, the UK FCA Conduct Regulator and the UK Treasury and released its recommendations on June 11. It was launched in the wake of the LIBOR scandal by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney as a major contribution to the UK political and policy debate around the conduct of traders in UK…

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The AIIB: Political influence and infrastructure policy

Financial Services

Stephen Adams
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The decision by the UK to participate in the founding of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) provoked an intemperate response from Washington, which it as a challenge to the primacy of the Bretton Woods institutions and an instrument of Chinese regional influence. But the AIIB is also a concrete policy response to a very concrete policy problem. Whatever the…

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India Budget 2015: the long election campaign

General Policy

Stephen Adams
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At its heart, the February Indian budget was a calculation that a renewed pace of growth buys the Modi government time to get its political house in order to deliver further structural reforms.  It was a political budget sustaining government welfare support while aiming to channel it more effectively.  Insofar as it was a budget for investors, it focused on…

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Brit Risk 2015: Britain’s uncertain election

General Policy

Stephen Adams
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The outcome of the UK's May 2015 election is uncertain. It is the most open and unpredictable British national election for a generation

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Trade, regulation and TTIP’s political troubles

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
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The issue of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) has surfaced in the EU as a focus of political opposition to a possible TTIP trade and investment deal with the United States. The ISDS issue has reinforced the fact that TTIP's key rationale – that the EU and US markets are now so integrated that common approaches to market rulemaking make sense - is also its key…

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India Outlook - November 2014

General Policy

Stephen Adams
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This in-depth report examines the Indian Government's political and economic prospects six months on from Prime Minister Modi's May 2014 election victory.

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General Politics

Nature vs Nurture: ‘The first EU Commission born in the EU Parliament’?

General Politics

Stephen Adams
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The new European Commission takes office on November 1 after its requisite run of confirmation hearings with the European Parliament. First Vice President-designate Frans Timmermans observed in his own hearing that the Juncker Commission was “the first Commission born in the European Parliament”. The question for the coming five years of policy and politics is what – if…

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Britons and the Europe Question

General Policy

Stephen Adams
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A Global Counsel/TNS Poll conducted between 15 and 17 July asked British adults a series of questions about the desirability and timing of a vote on Britain’s membership of the EU. With Westminster convulsed by the perceived Eurosceptic challenge, British voters present a complicated picture of their own appetite for a plebiscite. They appear in favour of a referendum…

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Alstom, AstraZeneca and Anglo-French political risk

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
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Last week brought to a close the two-month public courtship of GE and Alstom, with a government-brokered deal that will see the French state acquire a minority voting right and ultimately a minority stake in the French company. The Alstom episode cast a long shadow in the UK, where the government faced pressure to take a similarly activist approach to the proposed…

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Imperfect mirror: the new European Parliament and ‘European’ politics

General Policy

Stephen Adams
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After last weekend’s European Parliamentary elections, the new European legislature has begun to compose itself for the next five year term. As usual, the multiple political markets of the EU have sent a wide mix of parties to a chamber that is very imperfect snapshot of the mood across Europe. The composition of the Parliament matters for its likely approach to…

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Britain and Europe: not black and white but grey

General Policy

Stephen Adams
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A Global Counsel/TNS poll of British public opinion three weeks ahead of the European Parliamentary elections suggests a fine balance between supporters and opponents of UK membership of the EU. There is a marked generational split. Britain’s quintessential Eurosceptic is a man over 55, working class, living in the South East of England and no longer in employment. By…

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Ecobank and the African cross-border banking gap

Financial Services

Stephen Adams
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Leadership changes at African retail bank Ecobank two weeks ago ended a long and debilitating governance crisis for the bank. These events offer a case-study in the complicated politics of African cross-border banking and some of the big challenges banks like Ecobank will face working with African regulators struggling to build institutional frameworks to keep up with…

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Ukraine debt, democracy and division

Financial Services

Stephen Adams
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The interim government formed in Kiev this week will need political skill, external support and good fortune if it is to restore stability, hold the country together and satisfy the high hopes for economic and political change. Kiev’s choices will be fundamentally shaped by the choices of its neighbours, above all Russia and Vladimir Putin. The current situation is a blow…

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Stress test: transforming the ECB in 2014

Financial Services

Stephen Adams
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In 2014 the European Central Bank (ECB) will take on one of the biggest and most complex banking supervision roles in the world. For the ECB this is an institutional, cultural and political transformation. It faces the double challenge of doing it when the Eurozone banking system is in poor shape, and when that banking sector weakness is undermining the ECB’s other core…

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Indonesia the Wirjawan question

Trade & Manufacturing

Stephen Adams
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Late last month, Indonesian Trade minister Gita Wirjawan stood down to concentrate on his long-anticipated campaign for the Indonesian Presidency. Wirjawan has set the tone for Indonesian inward investment and trade policy for half a decade, and that tone has been a pragmatic mix of openness and intervention. Under Wirjawan, Jakarta has taken a series of measures designed…

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