The nomination of Marcelo Ebrard as Mexico’s minister of economy caps the first major political victory for President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum following her win in the June national elections. Less than a year ago, Ebrard, a high-profile political heavyweight who served as Mexico’s secretary of foreign affairs under outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), was threatening to Sheinbaum’s and López Obrador’s Morena party to run for the presidency on his own. He had previously lost the 2012 race for the Moreno nomination to AMLO himself. But after the landslide victory that will make ..read more

On July 4, after 14 years of Tory rule, Britons handed the Labour Party a landslide election victory. The new prime minister, Keir Starmer, appointed Rachel Reeves as chancellor of the exchequer or finance minister, the first woman to hold the position in the country’s history. The feat took just 900 years; the first mention of a Royal Exchequer, tasked with overseeing the king’s finances, dates back to Henry I. Reeves, 45, joined Labour as a teenager. A national chess champion by age 14, she studied at Oxford University and the London School of Economics and landed her first post-graduate job ..read more

In this two-part feature on the economics of the Olympics, Global Finance delves into the financial strategies and innovations that the 2024 Paris Games, which run from July 26 to Aug. 11, are implementing to avoid the pitfalls of past host cities. Part one explores the historical context of Olympic costs and the steps the Paris Games organizing committee is taking to ensure fiscal responsibility. Part two examines the revenue generation and economic legacy of the Games, providing a detailed look at how the 2024 Summer Olympics might set a new standard for future host cities. Revenues from the ..read more

In this two-part feature on the economics of the Summer Olympics, Global Finance delves into the financial strategies and innovations that the 2024 Paris Games, which run from July 26 to Aug. 11, are implementing to avoid the pitfalls of past host cities. Part one explores the historical context of Olympic costs and the steps the Paris Games’ organizing committee is taking to ensure fiscal responsibility. Part two examines the revenue generation and economic legacy of the Games, providing a detailed look at how the 2024 Summer Olympics might set a new standard for future host cities. The 2024 ..read more

Can a new wave of FDI help Egypt to diversify and modernize its economy? At a bilateral investment conference in Cairo on July 1, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that European companies were signing deals for more than $43 billion with Egyptian companies “ranging from hydrogen to water management, from construction to chemicals, from shipping to aviation and to automotive.”  “Egypt really is enjoying a moment,” observes David Lubin, a senior research fellow at Chatham House in London and a seasoned global economic observer. That could well be an understatement ..read more

The Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) carried out its first domestic securities lending and borrowing (SLB) transaction in May as part of its strategy to raise market liquidity. The move marked an important development for the QSE, as it looks to increase market and product sophistication, depth, and securities lending. HSBC acted as custodian and agent-lender while QNB Financial Services (QNBFS) acted as the borrower. The QSE worked with Edaa, the licensed service provider under the Qatar Financial Market Authority that provides a range of essential services related to securities and financial instr ..read more

In the past decade, leaving aside the Covid-19-induced recession, Spain’s economy has performed better than the European average. The year 2024 looks to be no different; Spanish GDP is expected to expand to double the average in the euro area: between 1.9% and 2.1%, according to different estimates, versus a range of 0.8% to 1% for its peers. And this is likely to remain true in 2025 as well. “Things are going great, but the engines of growth are being exhausted.” says Miguel Cardoso, chief economist for Spain at BBVA Research. A generous fiscal policy, which has helped support the economic ex ..read more

The previous decade saw a wave of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) driven by a commodity market boom and foreign exchange reserves. Governments from Chile to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) use sovereign financial vehicles to diversify their economies and investment portfolios, secure intergenerational wealth and provide stability against shock events while aiming for better financial returns in more lucrative asset classes. This SWF growth has provided markets with additional liquidity, and many of these funds have become leading limited partnerships in financial markets. Many other governments a ..read more

In keeping with its intense focus on introducing cutting-edge digital infrastructure to its finance and banking systems, India in March became the first among major global financial market to implement T+0 settlement on its stock exchanges. Equity trades will now be settled on the same day they are made. Initially, the T+0 standard is being applied to 25 large-cap, blue-chip stocks, and upon satisfactory performance, will be extended to the rest of the market. The sped-up settlement cycle is a step up from India’s previous one-day settlement system. Indian exchanges started T+1 in 2021 with a ..read more

Dubai has once more topped the rankings of global cities attracting the most greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI). Last year the buccaneering emirate garnered 1,070 greenfield FDI projects, according to emirates news agency WAM, citing data from fDi Markets. In total, Dubai pulled in 1,650 FDI projects in 2023, amounting to just over 39 billion dirhams, or around $10.7 billion, an increase of 39% over the previous year’s figure. It also ranked first globally for greenfield FDI in several key sectors, including consumer goods, energy, e-commerce, and tourism. Greenfield FDI refers to eith ..read more