By Nick Lambe – Managing Director, Links International
With the silly season upon us, The Week That Was felt a little bit more like The Week That Wasn’t last week. Trump still leads the global news cycles with his various controversial statements to other governments as well as his appointments to the cabinet. This will be my last Week That Was for 2016, so I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a prosperous 2017.
AXA goes global with parental leave
In a major global move to bring in line parental leave policies, AXA has announced that it will support employees in most of their 64 countries of operation with a ‘Global Parental’ policy. In effect, all employees will receive either a minimum of 16 weeks or four weeks fully paid maternity or paternity leave respectively. This is a significant departure legislation in many countries in which they operate, such has Hong Kong, for example, where the Labour Ordinance allows 10 weeks’ pay at 90% for maternity leave and three days for paternity leave. Will this drive a global shift for the large corporates?
Expensive weekly shopping ahead in Asia?
Global growth in the grocery sector will be driven by inflation, population and rising incomes, and Asia will continue to be the biggest engine for growth in the next five years. For anyone that buys their groceries in Hong Kong like me, I didn’t think my weekly shop could get much more expensive!!
Banks back in the news…
More banks, from US firm Wells Fargo, to Italian firms Unicredit and Monte dei Paschi di Siena are in the news this week with Well Fargo being hit with restrictions around its ability to open international branches and buying non-bank companies until it satisfies the regulators around bankruptcy plans. Unicredit, on the other hand, are looking to raise 13bn Euro and shed 14,000 jobs to restore its fortunes, whilst Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest bank, is looking to save itself by raising 5bn Euro from investors. Hopefully 2017 will be a more positive year for the world’s banks…
Disclaimer: This column is designed to be a lighthearted weekly update on the global business news that I enjoyed reading. We would welcome your thoughts, comments and suggestions. Please do not hesitate to contact us.
More to come in the new year…
Read previous editions of The Week That Was:
issue 1
issue 2
issue 3
issue 4
issue 5
issue 6
issue 7
issue 8
issue 9
issue 10