BY COSTA VAYENAS In our globalized world, the recipe for a "successful" economy is well known. If a country wants to enjoy rapid economic growth and avoid high unemployment, it has to be....

The strikes in Greece against budget cuts are a warning to all the other governments which have dug themselves into deep debt. But the good news is that budget reform can be done: Canada did it the mi....

Moody's Investors Service has changed its Industry Sector Outlook for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) steel industry to ‘stable’ from ‘negative’, driven by the v....

Bond funds' inflows benefiting from shift out of money market funds

Demand for bond funds has picked up in an improving but still challenging financial environment, offering portfolio managers an opportunity to differentiate themselves, adding value through credit sel....

PIIGS, politics and the Euro

BY DR. JIM LEONTIADES CIIM, The Cyprus Business School Many countries would like to see another reserve currency as a rival to the US dollar. The Euro has been seen as the prime candidate for ....

Fears, not fundamentals, are ruling the market

Fears, not fundamentals, are ruling the market Amid the noise, the global recovery should remain the overriding investment theme of 2010 BY COSTA VAYENAS The strong correction in bonds and....

Business expectations continue to rise, says EIU survey

When the Corporate Expectations Barometer was launched, it was anyone’s guess how an online survey of business perceptions would fare in predicting the future. The May 2009 baseline survey, cond....

What if the Fed ran China's monetary policy?

BY COSTA VAYENAS In 1997, after hiking interest rates several times and watching the US equity market reach new high after new high in what he famously termed a bout of “irrational exuberanc....

CEOs' confidence rebounds, 40% plan to hire in 2010

With their worst fears of prolonged recession behind them, chief executives’ confidence for future growth has bounced back from the gloomy prospects of a year ago, according to the 13th Annual G....

Climate chaos in Copenhagen

BY DR. JIM LEONTIADES CIIM, The Cyprus Business School Amid a freezing Scandinavian snowstorm, politicians form 120 countries met in Copenhagen recently to combat global warming. The chaos out....

Greek government under pressure to revise economic strategy

BY COSTIS STAMBOLIS Last week saw Greece’s bond markets near collapse in what turned out to be an unprecedented chain of events by eurozone standards. Greek government two year bond yields w....

Zooming in on the BRICs

BY MARINA THEODOTOU Jim O’Neill a global economist at Goldman Sachs first coined the acronym back in the beginning of the decade, to highlight the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India....

Financial stakeholders still don’t see the ‘big picture’

Despite the wealth of publicly available information on company performance, stakeholders still struggle to see the bigger picture of how well businesses are performing, a new report for Ernst & Y....

Widespread dissatisfaction with insurance financial reporting

Insurance analysts across the world believe that a lack of quality and consistency in current insurance reporting is increasingly leading to the under-valuation of a number of the world’s leadin....

Dubai Inc may face shakeup after debt standstill

Dubai's shock move to restructure its biggest corporate debtor, Dubai World, and delay repayment on some of the company's $59 billion of liabilities could signal a broad restructuring of the....

New Thinking on Dealing with Financial Crises

DR. JIM LEONTIADES Cyprus International Institute of Management Poor Alan Greenspan. Only a short time ago the former head of the U.S. Federal Reserve was hailed as the guru of national economic....