Insights

The European Commission’s rejection of the combination of Deutsche Börse and NYSE Euronext in 2012 was one of the biggest merger stories of the year. The speculation this week that...

The Italian election of February 24-25 is becoming increasingly hard to call with any certainty, as the centre-right under Silvio Berlusconi continues to close the gap on the centre-left coalition...

Spanish politics have taken a dramatic turn in the last fortnight, and one that has not fully registered outside of Spain. Spain’s biggest political scandal of the post-Franco era may...

January was a month of war and peace in Paris. The same day France committed military forces in Mali, a three month negotiation between France’s employers' federation and its major...

Tom Albanese’s departure from Rio Tinto last week was precipitated by substantial write downs in Rio Tinto’s aluminium businesses. Rather than just a case of a badly-timed bet on the...

This week the UK government has published draft legislation that will restructure British banks on significantly different terms than the rest of Europe and the US, and on terms that...

The granting of the Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status to Russia by the US last week is probably the most significant US trade policy development in a year when...

In Brussels yesterday, Eurozone governments salvaged something from their commitment to put in place plans for a banking ‘union’ in Europe before the end of 2012. After the high expectations...

At face value, last week’s collapsed budget negotiations in Brussels were a reminder that there is a good reason why the European Union only debates its long term budget once...

In the last two weeks the European Commission has proposed further tightening for the EU’s flagship Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) to try to raise European carbon prices. At the...

This week marks six months in the French Presidency for François Hollande. Despite a strong Presidential election victory and socialist strength at all levels of French government, Hollande’s popularity ratings...

The long year dispute between the EU, the US and China over solar panel exports escalated again this week with a Chinese WTO challenge to the EU’s energy subsidy regime...

Last week’s announcement that Rosneft would agree to buy BP’s stake in its TNK-BP joint venture will almost certainly be the Russian deal of the year. The tie-up sharply increases...

Like other non-Eurozone EU states, including the UK, Poland faces a fundamental problem of how to deal with potentially being sidelined in an EU increasingly dominated by Eurozone issues and...

Although the ‘Eurozone question’ for Brussels has moved on to the details of banking union and the handling of a likely future Spanish bailout, Greece remains the most volatile part...

Three key pieces of the European agenda are going to create profound political problems for the UK over the next few years. How the UK resolves - or does not...

Two weeks after high profile reforms to fuel subsidies and rules on inward investment were pushed through the Indian cabinet by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram...

The launch of the European Commission’s expected market abuse investigation against Russia’s Gazprom has raised temperatures between Brussels and Moscow. We might ask: is the case a sign of European...