Business and Finance News

Silk originated in China and the Silk Road is the collective name given to a number of ancient trade routes linking China and Central Asia. Modern China wants to recreate the Silk Road with road and rail links from Beijing via Urumqi in the north to we…

Despite heightened worries in recent weeks about the stability of China’s economy and the process of reform, around two-thirds (63%) of senior executives from financial services companies in China, and more than three-quarters of those offshore (78%) think that the renminbi (RMB) will become fully convertible and tradable without restrictions in around five years’time. Majorities of both groups believe it will take only slightly longer (7-10 years) for the RMB to become a global investment currency. 

An analysis of 200 European cities shows that housing in Germany is too cheap rather than too expensive while comparisons of prosperity between countries as well as between regions within a country show that the higher the share of the urban population…

A report by the US Treasury has estimated that capital outflows from China in the 8 months of 2015 to August exceeded $500bn. The report says that the renminbi (RMB) has appreciated nearly 30% in real effective terms since June 2010.

Ireland: The national parliament’s belated Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis, colloquially known as the Banking Inquiry, has yet to report but expect nothing as you shall not be disappointed. Enda Kenny, taoiseach, who has put tax cuts at the heart of his party’s general election programme, in commonwith his recent predecessors merits the famous epitaph for the French Bourbons delivered by Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, prince de Bénévent: “they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”

This was a week for a reality check on some of the startups and older private firms that have at least a one billion dollar valuation. In recent years the tech industry has called these firms unicorns after the mythological animal resembling a horse or…

Finfacts reported in 2010 that the real price — on constant currency value basis calculated by stripping out inflation — of a Dutch house in Amsterdam, the commercial capital of The Netherlands, only doubled in more than 350 years according to IMF research. In Ireland through boom, bust and recovery, real prices have almost doubled in about 20 years.

Census data show that the portion of US firms and employment accounted for by startups has declined since the 1980s according to a Harvard Business School (HBS) report. However, respondents to a survey of HBS alumni paint a very positive picture of ent…

Last month when Citi Research forecast that a global recession is likely in coming years, Martin Wolf, the chief economic commentator of the Financial Times wrote tha the case was plausible. “This does not mean we must expect a recession. But people sh…

Apart from a tax rise on cigarettes, the two ministerial statements on Tuesday setting out budget tax cuts and planned spending rises in 2016, were packed with items of cheer for the public that politicians yearn to deliver. Watching the change from th…