Focus Africa
Great Evils and Great Errors
To improve, it is necessary to recognize one's mistakes. This is a basic, simple principle that we all learn when we are children, for example while at school: when you make a spelling mistake in a dictation, the teacher highlights it in red. Here you made a mistake, don't do it again. And it doesn't matter if out of a hundred words, seventy were right. You must concentrate on the thirty that you got wrong. We have all been there, yet it seems that many forget this simple principle. The events of recent weeks have tragically highlighted the fact that many errors have been made. We see this in ...
Competition and Concentration between Banks, Neobanks, and Payment Institutions
Competition and concentration are phenomena that simultaneously regard traditional banks, “neobanks,” and payment institutions. The first are proper financial intermediaries; the third are service companies that at least for now, do not intermediate anything; while the second are relatively hybrid entities, although it is difficult to generalize because they are very varied. The evolution of the context in which these three categories of operators act starts from the idea of being able to produce new financial services of various types, especially payment services, in a simple, low-cost, efficient, ...
Lavazza’s Response to the Great Challenge
The pandemic upon us has caused an emergency that will have a very significant impact on the international economy. Our country and its business and productive fabric will have to go through a test of resistance, just a short time after the one already passed after the financial crisis of 2008. This event - whose unforeseeability and rapid spread found us unprepared nationally and globally - forces us to rethink and reconfigure our way of approaching business, our relations with society, and our way of belonging to a community. Lavazza decided to act immediately, in the initial days of the crisis, ...
Lavazza’s Response to the Great Challenge
The pandemic upon us has caused an emergency that will have a very significant impact on the international economy. Our country and its business and productive fabric will have to go through a test of resistance, just a short time after the one already passed after the financial crisis of 2008. This event - whose unforeseeability and rapid spread found us unprepared nationally and globally - forces us to rethink and reconfigure our way of approaching business, our relations with society, and our way of belonging to a community. Lavazza decided to act immediately, in the initial days of the crisis, ...
The Rise of the Third King
In the weeks of the coronavirus, everything that has happened - or not happened - in American economic and monetary policy has immediately reverberated around the world, including through the channel represented by the dollar. It is no coincidence that the first coordinated action between the central banks of the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland, and Canada was a dual intervention - the first on the 15th and the second on the 20th of March - aimed at strengthening dollar repo channels between the Fed and other central banks, both in terms of volumes, that ...
The Rise of the Third King
In the weeks of the coronavirus, everything that has happened - or not happened - in American economic and monetary policy has immediately reverberated around the world, including through the channel represented by the dollar. It is no coincidence that the first coordinated action between the central banks of the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland, and Canada was a dual intervention - the first on the 15th and the second on the 20th of March - aimed at strengthening dollar repo channels between the Fed and other central banks, both in terms of volumes, that ...
Is a New Division of Work Possible?
In this period of emergency, family (im)balance is being put to the test by people being forced to be constantly together in the home. The question is: when mutual help between partners becomes essential, is a greater sharing of domestic work and care also emerging? For the moment, the answer seems to be no. An investigation conducted by the Valore D association on the issue of female smartworking[1] stresses that in Italy one out of three women is working more than before and is unable to reconcile her work activity with home life. Home work and care, which has increased out of all proportion ...
Una nuova divisione del lavoro è possibile?
In questo periodo di emergenza, il (dis)equilibrio familiare è messo a dura prova dalla convivenza continua e forzata delle persone nell’ambiente domestico. Ma, laddove l’aiuto reciproco tra i partner diventa essenziale, emerge anche una maggiore condivisione dei carichi di lavoro domestico e di cura? Sembra per il momento di no. In un’indagine condotta dall’Associazione Valore D sul tema dello smartworking al femminile[1] si sottolinea come in Italia una donna su tre stia lavorando più di prima e non riesca a conciliare la sua attività lavorativa con la vita domestica. Il lavoro domestico ...
Mask Diplomacy
They are already calling it “mask diplomacy.”[1] Selling medical devices in the time of Covid-19 is highly profitable, and China is starting to convert its economy. In just one month, it has gone from 20 to 116 million masks a day. And that’s still not enough. The new business involves both state-owned companies and small factories, incentivized with subsidies and tax reductions, interest-free loans and preferential channels to obtain the necessary documents and approvals. The result? Sinopec, that we could define as a state-owned multinational in the petrochemical field, has inaugurated ...
Mask Diplomacy
They are already calling it “mask diplomacy.”[1] Selling medical devices in the time of Covid-19 is highly profitable, and China is starting to convert its economy. In just one month, it has gone from 20 to 116 million masks a day. And that’s still not enough. The new business involves both state-owned companies and small factories, incentivized with subsidies and tax reductions, interest-free loans and preferential channels to obtain the necessary documents and approvals. The result? Sinopec, that we could define as a state-owned multinational in the petrochemical field, has inaugurated ...