Latest data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) suggests that the volume of outstanding auto loans issued by American commercial banks fell sharply for the first time in six years. It reached $ 1.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016, and was already $ 440 million by the end of the first quarter of 2017. Experts see this as a sign that international banks are leaving the...

In 2016, China has become a leader by number of applications for obtaining patents for new brands. Local companies filed 3.7 million requests. Finnish company TrademarkNow, which studies the intellectual property market, says that high-tech companies became the most active applicants for obtaining patents for new trademarks in the last year. Of the 50 the most active companies, 12 represent this...

European publishers fear that the offer to give online users an opportunity to turn off transfer of data on their movements on the Internet to all sites is dangerous. According to them, it will immediately lead to lost advertising revenue. However, mainly American corporations such as Google, Apple and Facebook will benefit in this case. Heads of more than 30 European publishers sent a collective...

The Committee on the Global Financial System (CGFS) of the Bank for International Settlements, together with the Financial Stability Board (FSB), presented their first report on fintech platforms for lending. As the sector is growing rapidly, the regulators found it interesting to measure potential impact on the nature of lending and the traditional banking industry. Their main conclusion,...

Price of extra virgin olive oil has increased by almost a quarter since the beginning of 2017 and has already exceeded $ 4200/t in bulk. Due to the drought in the Mediterranean this year, its production could drop sharply in Greece, Italy and Tunisia. Spain has been affected insignificantly. "The situation is terrible in Italy, in Greece and in Tunisia. Can you imagine what would happen if oil...

Nigam Arora, founder of the analytical company Arora Report, on how to make money on the Middle East tour of the US president. According to media reports, several agreements for a total of several hundred billion dollars were signed during the visit of US President Donald Trump to Saudi Arabia. Which companies will benefit from this and, more importantly, what is the investment potential of these...

Gartner research company reported that about 380 million smartphones were sold in the Q1 2017 around the world, which is 9.1% more than a year earlier. Market shares of the global smartphone market’s leaders, Samsung and Apple, fell by 1-3%, while Chinese manufacturers Huawei, Oppo and Vivo increased their share by 1-4%. As for the global mobile OS market, Android still leads by a large margin,...

Several large plants for the production of electric batteries will be opened in Europe in the coming years. Their main consumers will be automotive companies. The plants are expected to become an engine on the way to increasing the market share of European energy companies. Europe, which lost the war in the solar batteries manufacturing market to Chinese competitors and survived a series of...

Though benefiting from little media coverage over the past years, several large areas in Africa have seemed to break free from the vicious circles of poverty and have been posting outstanding growth rates for many consecutive years. While economists often shrugged before, looking at high African growth rates, expecting them to collapse at the next political crisis, a handful of countries have been resisting crises and building their wealth and infrastructural resilience throughout instability phases, paving the way for long-term growth.