Unease is growing about the financial health and position of banks large and small in the US and Britain in particular, and our investment banks, like Babcock and Brown and Macquarie Group are being caught up.
Conditions are getting tougher in some of the world's major economies. Figures suggest that China's huge manufacturing sector might be slowing because of sluggish sales to the US and Europe.
Agricultural commodity prices should ease from their recent record peaks but over the next 10 years they are expected to average well above the mean of the past decade, according to the latest Agricultural Outlook from OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Worldwide broadband subscriptions will reach 415 million in 2008, representing one billion discrete broadband users, according to “Broadband Forecast: 1H 2008,” a report just released by Strategy Analytics. The number of broadband subscriptions will continue to grow to 621 million by 2012.
U.S. insurers concentrated their M&A activities domestically in 2007, especially in the property-casualty and health insurance and managed care sectors, and were much less active on the global stage, according to a new study by Conning Research and Consulting.
Brazil should strengthen its institutions and improve the regulations for key sectors, such as electricity, telecommunications and transport, in order to boost its economic growth and the quality and value of core services to its citizens, according to a new OECD report.
Fitch Ratings warns of the risks to emerging market (EM) sovereign creditworthiness from rising inflation and has developed a ranking of Fitch-rated EMs according to their vulnerability to inflation shocks.
In Fitch Ratings' review of 72 operators from 27 different countries, total aggregate wireless subscribers reached 1.681 billion for 2007, representing an annual growth of 17.6%, which is lower than the 2006 annual growth rate of 18.9%.
