News roundup: ECB eyes changes to euro clearing supervision; banks turn their attention to Frankfurt

FINANCIAL TIMES SPECIAL REPORT ON BREXIT AND LUXEMBOURG

A new series of articles published by the Financial Times delves deeper into the potential gains that Brexit can deliver for Luxembourg, a small country of 570,000 residents where roughly 1 in every 30 individuals works in financial services. See the full series of articles here. For more information, please also see my May 2017 report on the effects of Brexit on Europe’s financial services industry, which includes special coverage on Luxembourg, Frankfurt, Paris, and other select cities. Continue reading “News roundup: ECB eyes changes to euro clearing supervision; banks turn their attention to Frankfurt”

Infographic: Mobile payments in Europe

Mobile money services are becoming increasingly popular around the world, ranging from East Africa’s M-PESA to popular smartphone apps like Venmo in the United States. This infographic takes a deeper look at the percentage of young adults aged 15 to 34 in European countries that reported making payments via mobile phone in 2014.

Interactive infographic coming soon; in the meantime, please view at this link.

Brexit: Regulatory equivalence and single market access for the financial services industry

The attached document, originally submitted in May 2017 as my Master’s thesis upon the conclusion of my Master of Arts in International Relations (concentrations in European regional studies and international economics), provides an in-depth assessment of the regulatory framework that has allowed financial services firms in London to access the European Union’s single market, as well as the changes that could come with Brexit and the possible results for competing European financial centers.

Implications of unsustainable euro inflation for US exports

Since the euro’s introduction in 1999, over 75 percent of foreign debts have been denominated in euros and US dollars, echoing the dual-currency system of the first half of the twentieth century, when the dollar and the British pound sterling were the key currencies in international finance.

With the euro seen as a stabilizing factor for regional economies, many nations have pegged their national currencies to the euro, maintaining a fixed exchange rate. Bulgaria, Denmark, Croatia, and more than a dozen mostly-francophone West and Central African countries have pegged their currencies to the euro. Such was the case for Switzerland until January 2015, when the Swiss National Bank suddenly scrapped the Swiss franc’s peg to the euro in an effort to preempt the European Central Bank’s planned €60 billion-per-month quantitative easing program.

Continue reading “Implications of unsustainable euro inflation for US exports”