Insights

On February 24th, Senior Director Stephen Adams presented to the Trade Policy Research Forum on the ways in which supply chain due diligence by UK and US private equity firms has evolved since 2016.

What seemed the most extreme of scenarios three weeks ago is now slowly becoming a reality: an embargo against Russian oil exports. Joe Biden, the US president, has announced that the US would ban the import of Russian oil and the UK’s business and energy secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has said Britain would phase out Russian oil imports by the end of 2022. These…

Global Counsel members Alessandro Gangarossa and Felicity Hall are joined by Anders Rehnberg to discuss the EU's proposal Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has provoked one of the strongest non-military reactions from the West seen in decades. What explains Asian reactions to the invasions, and how are their economies coping with the fallout on global supply chains and energy markets? And what lessons will China take from this in regard to its rivalry with the West?

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has triggered a humanitarian and refugee crisis. The war is acutely impacting access to medicine, food, and cash in Ukraine while the ramifications of Western sanctions on Russia and Belarus are having a profound effect on these economies and more widely. While there is an inevitable focus on the implications of the conflict for…

Benjamin Wegg-Prosser and Rebecca Park are joined by Chris Weafer, a Moscow-based investment strategist and founding partner of Macro-Advisory, to talk through the sanctions’ impact on corporates and investors and the specific challenges they face in Russia and the wider region.

On Wednesday morning, Russian troops entered Ukraine. As stressed by policymakers in London, Washington, and Brussels, everything is now on the table in terms of further sanctions against Russia. Whatever new measures might ensue-and depending on Russia’s counter-response-the immediate costs and possible risks for investors and corporates in the region have never been…

In December 2021 Global Counsel and clearBorder surveyed 150 UK importers and exporters on their experience of using the UK border. We set their responses against an analysis of UK border-crossing data and an assessment of key UK border policy developments in 2021. The State of the Border report is the most comprehensive business-eye view of the operation of the UK border…

‘Top in tech’ is a monthly episode from the GC tech policy team. Each month, the team lift the lid on the latest in Europe’s ‘techlash’, identifying where the debate is heading in London and Brussels, the politics behind it, and what this might mean for the apps and online services we use every day. 

Since the beginning of its Council of the EU presidency, the French government has been vocal about the urgency to secure a deal on major digital proposals, namely the Digital markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA). Other EU governments and the EU institutions are supportive of this accelerated timetable on the basis that it could help combat Eurosceptic…

US Democrats have been wringing their hands for weeks about the apparent collapse late last year of President Biden’s proposed Build Back Better social spending package, with swing vote Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) now-infamously pulling his support for the multi-trillion-dollar bill just before the holidays. The plan’s failure has obscured for now the fact that a separate…

The tense situation in Ukraine has prompted conversations about investor sentiment towards distressed assets in fragile states. For private equity firms, investing in regions that are unstable and carry uncertainty, whether because of political instability or conflict, is risky. 

In a bonus episode, as the standoff at the Russian-Ukraine border continues, Alexander Smotrov and Rebecca Park discuss the economic and geographic implications of the crisis with CFC Big Ideas Partner Vasyl Myroshnychenko and CEC Group Chairman Marek Matraszek.

Miranda Lutz is joined by Matt Bennett, Executive Vice President for Public Affairs at Third Way, a Washington, DC-based public policy think tank to discuss the progress of the Biden administration thus far and what is to come ahead of the November 2022 US midterm elections.

As inflation rises in the UK, (the latest forecast suggesting 5.4% for consumer prices for the year to December 2021), so too is it rising up the agenda for policymakers and businesses. This raises important policy and policy communications questions, but also questions about how consumers will respond if policymakers don’t – or even if they do. 

Anikó Zsebik, Yi-Fang Lee and Alessandro Gangarossa unpack a recent trade squabble between Lithuania and China over the former’s new Taiwan-friendly policies.

Private financing of green hydrogen projects is likely to gain traction in the US, galvanised by billions in federal funding forthcoming from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), an infrastructure bill passed in the US Congress last year. The IIJA authorised $8 bn in grants to foster hydrogen hubs, accelerating both production and end-use applications that…

In the four years that GC has run its annual ‘Politics of’ conference, no theme has generated more interest than this year’s theme of decoupling. We know only too well from working with a wide range of clients on the evolving risk landscape in relations between China and the rest of the world how uncertain and sensitive this issue can be. The sensitivity and the interest are surely linked.