Investments

By Charles Woolfson One of Britain’s most celebrated entrepreneurs and an avid supporter of Brexit in the business community, the inventor Sir James Dyson, has...

The EU Commission under Jean-Claude Juncker is proposing an extension of EFSI, the European Fund for Strategic Investments. Instead of terminating in 2018, it would run until 2020. The public funds and EU guarantees would be topped up from 21 billion euros to 33.5 billion. In this way, the intention is to mobilise 500 billion euros in investment capital instead of 315 billion as originally planned. This sounds like a lot of money, but on closer inspection it shrinks away rapidly.

This week (December 2-10) [1] the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is being negotiated in Jakarta, Indonesia. If signed, RCEP would grant corporations the exclusive right to bypass domestic legal systems and sue governments at international tribunals whenever they feel government regulation can limit their profits [2].