Case number AT. 40462 On 17/07/2019, the Commission decided to initiate antitrust proceedings in case AT.40462 Amazon Marketplace. The proceedings were initiated with a view to adopting a decision in application of Chapter III of Council Regulation No 1/2003 and concern the use by Amazon of commercially sensitive information available to Amazon’s marketplace operations, regarding […]
Category: Business Intelligence
According to Iran Daily, the Iranian government amended its regulations on cryptocurrencies to allow them to be exclusively used for funding imports, at a time of increased pressure on the country’s FX reserves. The move is illustrative of a tendency among a number of Petrostates like Russia, Kazakhstan and Venezuela to support through energy subsidies. the development of a homegrown crypto-currency mining. It could allow these countries to hedge and ultimately to significantly lower their exposure to the US dollar and US financial institutions. The Iranian move also shows that crypto-mining is an emerging global industry in its own right which has moved from being considered as an outcast to being treated as a strategic asset.
The measures taken by the Trump Administration against Chinese technology firms go far beyond Huawei. The latest casualty is SMIC, China’s flagship semiconductor fabrication firm. China’s semiconductors industry is now having difficult times. The US-China dispute has morphed into a commercial embargo against Chinese semiconductors industry. It involves non-Chinese and non-US companies, first and foremost Taiwan’s TSMC and Korea’s Samsung. It could have far reaching consequences, leading to a new restructuring of this global industry.
Revisiting George Kennan’s Containment Argument In February 1946, George Kennan, then an American diplomat in Moscow, sent his famed “Long Telegram“, which predicted the Soviets would only respond to force and that the best way to handle them would be through a long-term strategy of containment. The content of this telegram was later published by George […]
Biden’s plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice is a watered down and more realistic version of the Green New Deal championed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). It aims to reach net-zero emissions no later than 2050, which would put US environmental ambitions on par with the latest Green Deal proposal put forward by the European Commission, through a legislative enforcement mechanism in 2021 that would achieve legally-binding emissions reductions. We analyze the general philosophy, the technical measures and the potential impact of this plan.
More than a decade after the invention of Bitcoin in 2008 by a group of techies using the name Satoshi Nakamoto and almost three years after the Great Crypto Crash of 2018, crypto-currencies and digital assets are finally coming of age. A few countries are spearheading the global regulatory effort by focusing on the opportunities associated with the crypto revolution in what looks increasingly like a fierce global competition to replace the traditional foundations of money, banking and finance with new principles and procedures.
For someone with a such a personal and professional interest in the future of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region – cf. my bio, my book “A New Development model for the MENA region”, published in French in 2019 with a foreword by Former WTO Managing-Director and current President of the Paris Peace Forum Pascal Lamy), and my 12-sessions long seminar on the MENA […]
Known as the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DC/EP), the CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) project piloted by the People’s Bank of China is so far the most advanced projet of its kind in the world. The introduction of a CBDC in the world’s most populous country and second largest economy may have far reaching consequences.
The hearing in front of the US Sentate of the CEOs of four out of five of the largest US Tech companies may announce a rejuvenation of Antitrust laws and policies in the United States. If the report expected later this month is followed by legislative action, this would bring back these laws and policies closer to their original philosophy. But their application to Internet Platforms is likely to yield significantly different outcomes compared with earlier high profile cases.
The Russian Tech sector has witnessed a remarkable development over the last twenty years, moving out of a soviet state-led institutional and technological matrix into a beacon for flagship tech companies such as Kaspersky Lab, Telegram, Yandex and Ozon. The COVID-19 pandemic and recession presents both challenges and opportunities for Russia’s tech players.