Every two months IREF publishes a Newsletter on Financial and Banking Features that are affecting the EU.
They are authored by IREF Senior Fellows Gordon Kerr and John Butler, with Enrico Colombatto, experts with first-hand insight into financial markets and their interplay with government policy.
In mid-September former ECB President Mario Draghi published a 400-page report recommending changes necessary to boost the EU’s competitiveness. Although couched in broadly positive language, the document did little to…
The recent elections in the EU, the UK, and France; what impact are the results likely to have on financial and monetary policy? Before these elections, mainstream commentators worried that…
Introduction Two years after we last reviewed the fintech sector1, three significant trends are emerging which we explore in the body of this Newsletter: Investors remain wary of the sector…
Introduction – 130 Central Banks have CBDC Projects Since we last reported on the ECB’s thinking about CBDCs1, multiple central banks have undertaken research in designing, operating and selling CBDCs.…
Introduction – the life and career of M. Jacques Delors, 1925-2023 Born in the interwar years, Jacques Delors joined France’s central bank aged 20, where he worked for seventeen years.…
Followers of US monetary policy are raising concerns about the consequences of the Federal Reserve’s efforts to reverse the 17% growth in the money supply (M21) in the two-year period…
At a dinner early in July the CEO of NatWest bank group (formerly known as RBS) Dame Allison Rose told a senior BBC journalist that the high-net-worth subsidiary of the…
Questionable business models in Fintech have been exposed, as predicted, in response to rising interest rates. In Europe, the UK and US, rates have risen from near zero levels at…
Ratings Agencies take notice of deteriorating finances Debt ratings agencies may not have the power they used to possess before the 2008 global financial crisis, but they still carry influence.…
Introduction – Bulgaria’s recent announcement On 17 February, Bulgarian finance minister Rositza Velkova announced that, rather than continue as planned with the full, formal adoption of the euro on 1…
