E&MFLASH

2019-07-17 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

Messages from Hong Kong

It has been called the last battle of Hong Kong. Two million demonstrators out of a total of seven million inhabitants, practically one out of three, took to the streets to oppose the approval of a law that would permit extradition to China for crimes punished with a minimum of seven years in prison. They won: the discussion in the legislature was postponed to some future date. But the war to maintain “HongKongitude” didn’t just start, and won’t end anytime soon. In reality, the last word is scheduled for 2047, when the former British colony will definitively lose all of the autonomy it ...

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2019-07-04 Samanta Isaia

Cultural Institutions as Enterprises

“What can the world of industry do for culture?”. This was the question posed in a round table discussion organized by the Turin Industrial Association, an occasion for interaction between local enterprises and the world of culture, in which I recently took part. A first answer seems to be the following: culture is important, it should be protected and supported; business is enlightened and dedicates attention and funding to culture, obtaining visibility and consideration in exchange. It’s encouraging that the industrial world is seeking ways to support culture. Yet I wonder why it is so ...

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2019-07-03

HIT Radar: Application Focus - Finance

Cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency is a digital token whose creation is regulated by the blockchain technology, which also ensures the legitimacy of transactions conducted using that digital asset. Despite the humongous hype around cryptocurrencies, the real value of this technology is still unclear – due to the lack of mainstream services and real business cases. Cryptocurrencies are the first technology able to create valuable scarcity in the digital world; therefore, they have the potential to make a significant impact at an enterprise level. A CxO must be prepared to enhance this application ...

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2019-07-03 Gianmarco Ottaviano

Public Goods Need Europe

There are at least three wrong ideas that need to be cleared up to begin a constructive debate on the role of the European Union at this point in history. The first is that the important decisions in the EU are made in Brussels without any involvement of the Member States. The second is that the decisions made in Brussels have no democratic basis since they are made by bureaucrats not elected by the people. And the third is that there are no truly “European” decisions that Member States should make together with Brussels. The fundamental purpose of the European Union is to allow the governments ...

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2019-06-11 Roberto Ruozi

Cryptocurrencies: The Role of the Bank of Italy and the Consob

In recent times, our monetary and financial authorities have finally decided to intervene in the dark world of cryptocurrencies and especially of cryptoactivities. Given the confusion and lack of knowledge on the subject, we should first state that the former are virtual currencies, the most widespread of which is Bitcoin, issued without any underlying value, not minted or produced physically, but traded electronically. Cryptoactivities, on the other hand, are generally linked to the funding of enterprises and projects, do not have any monetary function, and are expressed in cryptocurrencies, ...

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2019-06-11 Donato Masciandaro

Illegal Capital Flows, Europe's Holes

The case of Danske Bank, the largest bank in Denmark, was the sixth time in just a few months that a bank belonging to a Member State of the European Union was implicated in the laundering of dirty money: Estonia, Germany, Holland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Malta, strictly in alphabetical order. And that’s not all: in January, the European Commission issued its first recommendation on the so-called “gold visas,” the practice by which certain EU countries such as Malta, Cyprus, and Bulgaria grant citizenship to non-EU citizens in exchange for financial investments. These “gold visas” can ...

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2019-06-11 Cecilia Attanasio Ghezzi

What’s in the New Silk Road

Italy was the first G7 country to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with China. The framework is that of the so-called New Silk Road, the colossal investment plan launched in 2013 by the President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping, with the idea of exploiting the trade routes of antiquity to move goods from one side of the Eurasian continent to the other, by sea and by land. In essence, the goal is to cultivate and strengthen the economic links between China and the participating nations through a new network of infrastructure that will potentially favor the creation of an important ...

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Gianluca Salviotti, Leonardo De Rossi

HIT Radar: Application Focus – Information Technology

Blockchain-based Smart Contract A blockchain-based smart contract is a computer program code that is capable of facilitating, executing, and enforcing the negotiation or performance of an agreement (i.e. contract) using blockchain technology. Being able to set-up a software solution, which provides an exchange of value in a secure, transparent and automatic way can sound as a tremendous opportunity for everyone. However, current blockchain platforms are not (yet) ready to support the data tsunami smart-contracts can generate. Smart contracts are an interesting tool with a true potential you should ...

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Andrea Beltratti, Alessia Bezzecchi

What is Asked of Wealth Management Today

The sector of asset/wealth management is in a phase of profound transformation. It is anticipated that revenues will not grow in the next three years, due in part to the pressure on management fees. In the U.S., the average cost of bond and equity funds fell from 0.76% and 0.99% in 2000, to 0.48% and 0.59% respectively (Investment Company Institute). The trend has recently become stronger: on August 1, 2018, Fidelity launched a true trade war by offering the sale of two market index funds with zero fees. As we have seen for some time, such as when Amazon announces its entry into new sectors, the ...

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2019-05-17 Paola Dubini, Elena Raviola

A Clash between Fields

Göteborg, Autumn 2016. The main book fair in Northern Europe, that celebrates 250 years of Swedish constitutional law on freedom of the press – the first in the world – was the subject of incredible media attention. The reason was that the fair admitted among the exhibitors a publishing company that publishes an extreme right-wing organ. The debate in traditional media and social media continued for over 15 months, with the publication of approximately 12,000 articles in all types of media, and more than 18,000 Tweets dedicated to the issue. In this public debate, the episode of the book ...

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