Category Archives: Finance

Black Women to Boost Diversity in Tech, Media, and Finance

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5 important efforts by black women to boost diversity in tech, media, and finance.

Across industries, from tech to media and finance, statistics show people of color lack representation.

Brittney Oliver reports: Black Americans have a higher unemployment rate than other racial groups, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and much has been written about how that inequality goes straight up the ladder to the boardroom. Across industries, from tech to media and finance, statistics show people of color lack representation. Here are five initiatives, by six black women, that are attempting to address those employment gaps–and connect people of color with jobs….Fastcompany

Special Committee against Money Laundering and Tax Evasion

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Hearing of the European Parliament on Malta / 17 Black

For more than two years a corruption scandal has been smouldering in Malta, centred around two of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s closest confidants: His Chief of Staff Keith Schembri and Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi. Several leaks and the Daphne Project of investigative journalists revealed that Schembri’s secret shell company was to receive a million-dollar sum from a company called „17 Black“. To date, Schembri has not been able to refute this suspicion.

The first part of the hearing of the Special Committee of the European Parliament on Monday evening will be an exchange of views with the Maltese Minister of Justice, Owen Bonnici. The second part will feature Matthew Caruana Galizia, son of Daphne Caruana Galizia, and a journalist from the Daphne project. The Daphne Project is an association of journalists led by Forbidden Stories, which continues the investigations of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was murdered last year.

Moneyval did not accept the invitation of the European Parliament’s special committee on the grounds that Malta was currently undergoing a mutual evaluation by Moneyval and that, therefore, there was no wish to comment publicly on Malta.Sven Giegold
Video

Dooa Eladl
www.w-t-w.org/en/doaa-eladl/

IMF’s Lagarde On The Absence Of Women At Banks

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The lack of women in finance is unfair to women and bad for banks, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde told Yahoo Finance this week at the World Economic Forum.

“There’s something wrong,” said Lagarde, who has helmed the IMF since 2011. “If you look at the composition of boards in that sector, only 20% of them are women. If you look at the CEOs of the financial sector, only 2% are women … our societies don’t look like that. And if you look at graduates from universities and business schools, it doesn’t look like 20% or 2%. It’s a lot more than that.”…The lack of women in finance

WEF: Global Risks Report 2019

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The world faced a growing number of complex and interconnected challenges in 2018. From climate change and slowing global growth to economic inequality, we will struggle if we do not work together in the face of these simultaneous challenges. The Global Risks Report 2019 provides an opportunity to place the global risk landscape into context at the beginning of the new year and identify priority areas for action in 2019.
WEF Global Risks Report 2019
World Economic Forum Annual Meeting/ Videos

World Economic Forum warns of impact of global tensions

Gender, Taxation, and Equality in Developing Countries

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Issues and Policy Recommendations

By Kathleen A. Lahey: Women in 1995 and the establishment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, increasing attention has been focused on how tax laws shape women’s lives, affect their access to property, incomes, and public services, and transmit gendered social expectations and stereotypes within societies, across borders, and through the generations.

Attention to the gender impact of tax laws has been accelerated by key trends in public finance policy frameworks. Beginning in 2005, the OECD and other international organizations began to recommend that countries at all levels of development focus on tax and spending cuts to stimulate economic growth. In the aftermath of the 2007/2008 global financial crisis, although many countries responded to the crisis by expanding selected spending measures to offset the recessionary effects of the crisis, the IMF began in 2010 to turn the focus back to fiscal consolidation through tax and spending cuts to promote economic recovery. Since then, the majority of countries at all levels of development began to replace crisis policies with fiscal austerity programs to cut spending on public resources and shift revenue production from progressive tax structures to regressive consumption taxes and privatization of public assets and services.

During this past decade, income inequalities have increased gaps between rich and poor due to lower levels of taxation on high incomes, increased business and individual use of transnational tax reductions and tax havens, over-reliance on shortterm extractive revenues and tax incentives to the corporate sector, and falling levels of public support for key drivers of economic development such as health, education, transportation, and income security spending…Gender, Taxation, and Equality in Developing Countries

Marilena Nardi
www.w-t-w.org/en/cartoon/marilena-nardi/

 

The Risk Of Serious And Organized Crime Infiltration In Europe

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MORE – Modelling and mapping the risk of Serious and Organised Crime infiltration in legitimate businesses across European territories and sectors.

MORE aimed to analyse, model and map the risk factors of serious and organised crime (SOC) infiltration in legitimate European businesses. It focused on risk factors at two levels:
• Macro level, i.e., across countries,regions and business sectors;
• Micro level, i.e., at the firm level, in terms of ownership and accounting red flags.

MORE built on two previous studies also co-funded by the EU Commission:
• The OCP project, which analysed the economy of organised crime in 7 EU MSs (Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK) from a macro perspective;
• The ARIEL project, which analysed the script of OC infiltration in businesses in 5 EU MSs (Italy, the Netherlands,
Slovenia, Sweden and the UK) from a micro perspective.

The MORE project combined the two perspectives and extended the analysis to the whole EU 28. To do so, it adopted a mixed qualitative and quantitative method — which is the only possible way to address a complex issue such as SOC infiltration in
businesses. And in the process, it performed:

• The collection of data, cases and evidence from a wide variety of sources (judicial documents, police reports, institutional reports and media news), relying also on a widespread network of national contact points.
• An in-depth crime-script analysis of 24 case studies of SOC infiltration (equivalent to more than 500 companies
in all EU MS);
• A macro analysis of statistics on selected risk factors across regions, countries and business sectors;
• A micro analysis of ownership and accounting data from a sample of more than 1,000 firms confiscated from OC.

MORE is only a first exploratory step towards a systematic monitoring of the problem of SOC infiltration in businesses across the EU MSs, but it shows that such monitoring would be essential to mitigate and prevent SOC in Europe….MORE_FinalReport
Official website

W-T-W Congratulates the Winners of the Cartoon of the Year 2018

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W-T-W Women and Finance Founder Dagmar Frank announces the winner of W-T-W.org Women and Finance Cartoon of the Year. Congratulations to Doaa Eladl for fighting for Press Freedom

Each and every one of our cartoonists deserves a prize.  W-T-W Women and Finance is proud to publish their important and tantalizing work. From a large pool of distinguished cartoons, voters selected this year Doaa Eladl.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) presents the 2018 press freedom barometerWhy is freedom of the press important in a democracy?

When our leaders threaten journalists, they are threatening the First Amendment, along with our most basic rights. “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press,” said Jefferson, “and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

Anti-Corruption Prize For Two Courageous Women

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Daphne Caruana Galizia and Ana Garrido Ramos winners of 2018 Anti-Corruption Award
Transparency International proudly announces that the late Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and Spanish whistleblower and campaigner Ana Garrido Ramos have been selected as winners of the 2018 Anti-Corruption Award. The awards were presented at a ceremony at the 18th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Copenhagen this evening.

Daphne Caruana Galizia’s son Matthew and husband Peter collected her award. Matthew Caruana Galizia said: “The bomb that took Daphne away from us extinguished the most powerful voice we ever had in our country’s fight for integrity. It also sought to rob us of the hope that her unwavering voice represented. Nothing will ever compensate for the journalist – let alone the person – we lost in her fight against corruption. But this award reminds us not only that hope remains ours to keep but that a large part of the world is hoping with us. It is an overwhelming and deeply emboldening thought for everyone fighting to win her justice and uphold her legacy. Thank you.”

Through her reporting, Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed corruption scandals involving influential politicians and others in Malta and abroad. Since her murder on October 16th, 2017, Maltese authorities have initiated criminal proceedings against her alleged killers, and an inquiry into whether anyone else should be charged.

Ms Caruana Galizia’s family have asked the government of Malta to establish a public inquiry to investigate whether the Maltese state bears any responsibility for her death, either through its failure to protect her or as a result of any state complicity…..Transparency

Daphne Caruana Galizia. Photo: Transparency International

The Ugly Truth Behind Stock Buybacks

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In November 2016, Goldman Sachs’ chief equity strategist David Kostin estimated that, in 2017, S&P 500 companies will spend $780 billion on buybacks — a new record.

That’s crazy.

For most of the 20th century, stock buybacks were deemed illegal because they were thought to be a form of stock market manipulation. But since 1982, when they were essentially legalized by the SEC, buybacks have become perhaps the most popular financial engineering tool in the C-Suite tool shed. And it’s obvious why Wall Street loves them: Buying back company stock can inflate a company’s share price and boost its earnings per share — metrics that often guide lucrative executive bonuses.

As Reuters wrote recently, “Stock buybacks enrich the bosses even when business sags.”…Forbes

“Stock buybacks enrich the bosses even when business sags.” /Reuters                                         Claudio Munoz
https://www.w-t-w.org/en/claudio-munoz/

International Anti-Corruption Day 2018

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The power of people’s pressure

Sunday 9 December is International Anti-Corruption Day. Together, we are #UnitedAgainstCorruption

Corruption impacts the poorest and most vulnerable in society the hardest.

It is ordinary citizens who suffer most when the corrupt steal funds intended for public services like infrastructure, healthcare and education, or take back-handers to award lucrative contracts to their cronies.

One in four people around the world say they have had to pay a bribe to access public services in the past twelve months.

But, when ordinary people fight back against corruption, they can make a real difference.
Leveraging people power

Across the world, Transparency International chapters work hard to help the public become involved and engaged in the fight against corruption…..Transparency