Tag: Company

When old technologies succumb to new creative ideas, competition thrives, innovation increases, the economy grows, and consumers benefit. In our study, we try to understand how widespread such political connections are and how they affect firm dynamics, market competition, innovation, and the overall productivity of the economy. We analyzed a newly available data from the Italian Social Security office on the firms and the employment histories of all private-sector workers from 1993-2014. The nature of this data allows us to explore how political connections affect companies and the broader economy. Overall, we found that employing local politicians is a common practice, especially among large and/or old firms. Consistent with what you might expect, we found that the more regulated the industry the more pervasive the political connections in that industry. These benefits are larger the more powerful the politician the firm employs. Not surprisingly, this premium increases with the political rank of a politician. At the more aggregate level, political connections tend to be associated with worse industry dynamics — a lower rate of firms entering the market, less reallocation of resources from less- to more-productive firms, less growth, and lower productivity. What is clear from our study is that effect of political connections go well beyond the private benefits to connected firms.

Brexiters lobby for European veto of article 50 extension Read more Verhofstadt claimed Farage wanted an extension to article 50 in order to keep Britain in the EU, so he can continue to have his MEP’s salary and transfer it into an offshore company. The former Ukip leader later told the Guardian: “Mr Verhofstadt is just plain wrong. I have never been the beneficiary of any offshore company.” As well as having had a show on LBC radio, Farage has been a regular political commentator on international television channels since stepping down as Ukip leader in 2016. Farage, who has criticised others for avoiding tax, has come under fire in the past for using Thorn in the Side Ltd to reduce the tax bill on his media appearances. The MEP has previously admitted setting up a trust fund in an offshore tax haven that could have enabled him to cut his tax bill. Farage, who condemned tax avoiders in a speech to the European parliament, said in 2013 that he paid a tax adviser to set up the Farage Family Educational Trust 1654 in the Isle of Man. He has denied benefiting from the arrangement and said he made a loss. He claimed the “only neat solution” was to leave the EU on 29 March, calling for any extension request from Britain to be vetoed. All MEPs are entitled to a transition allowance linked to their length of service in the parliament to bridge their move into a new job. MEPs who have served one term could get a maximum pre-tax payment of €50,900 (£43,575), while an MEP in office since 1999 could receive €169,680 before tax.

More than half of the company’s clients are in the UK, and Granat fears that two decades of hard work building up the business could now be put at risk by the looming threat of a no-deal Brexit. For Future Processing, there are three main concerns about a hard Brexit. First, the likelihood that the pound will plummet, creating currency risk. Vladimir Vano, a Bratislava-based analyst and member of the British Chamber of Commerce in Slovakia, estimated that a hard Brexit would lead to a 1% lower GDP for both Slovakia and the Czech Republic, due to trade disruption and increased bureaucracy, with further indirect impact likely as well. “We are on different edges of the EU geographically, but Britain has gone from zero to be the in the top five or six trade partners for Slovakia and the Czech Republic,” he said. Britain is in the group’s top three markets, but she said the company’s contractors were already looking to shift business from Britain to central Europe or Germany to avoid potential Brexit hurdles. As well as exporters, the tourism sector across the region could also be hit by a potential fall in the pound or a Brexit-related economic slowdown. For most businesses in the region with exposure to the British market, there remains a hope that the worst will not happen, but as each week goes by, the worry increases. Granat admitted to a frustration with British politicians’ failure to agree on a deal and the hopeless Westminster infighting. 170,000 Jobs in central and eastern Europe connected to food exports to UK.

Here are 10 companies that are influencing politics by donating huge amounts of money to political groups in 2018. Campaign contributions directly to political candidates are limited for individuals and companies alike. But since 2010, companies can pour millions of unregulated and uncapped "soft money" into independent Super Political Action Committees (PACs) to influence the outcomes of federal elections without contributing to an individual candidate. Open Secrets has compiled a list of the largest organizational political contributors to Democratic and Republican or liberal and conservative outside groups. According to Bloomberg, Sheldon Adelson has contributed over $200 million to conservative candidates and causes in recent years. Uline has donated $31.7 million so far in 2018, more than it spent for the 2016 cycle, according to Open Secrets. According to Open Secrets, Fahr LLC has donated $29.4 million to the current election cycle so far, and that may be just the beginning, since the corporation's 2016 contributions topped $90 million. In 2016, the hedge fund donated $59 million, giving slightly more to Democrats than Republicans. Through nonprofit Americans for Prosperity (which also donates millions to further Republican causes), the Koch brothers have organized to defeat transit projects in several cities, according to the New York Times. The company's donors gave more to Democrats in 2016, but favor Republicans so far this year.

Better late than never. For more than three years I have called on major U.S. oil companies to join their European, Asian and Latin American brethren in the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative. They are merely dedicated to finding ways to keep producing fossil fuels while also slowing global warming. On HoustonChronicle.com: Don't believe in climate change? I own an electric car and my spouse develops utility-scale renewable energy projects. But I also acknowledge that we will need oil and natural gas for the foreseeable future. The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative operates a $1 billion investment fund, called Climate Investments, to commercialize experimental technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These include capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide, improving internal combustion engines and reducing methane emissions. Lastly, in a reflection of these companies’ shift to natural gas, the initiative is working on a Clean Gas Project in the United Kingdom to “design a full-scale gas power plant with carbon capture and storage, including industrial CO2 sequestration capability,” according to an online presentation. Neither do these companies take political actions to back their public support for a carbon tax.

A big problem is messaging requires lying. He spoke of a Republican Party that didn’t exist. They're also working hard on superdelegate reforms, specifically ways of making the primary more democratic, but keeping the delegates in reserve in case of emergency: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who failed to get the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has campaigned to end the voting power of most superdelegates, keeping the issue alive. McGovern only won one state, Nixon took the other 49. Superdelegates were instituted as a way of preventing the party from nominating candidates that can't win the Presidency, at least in theory. Of course we all know how that turned out: She lost the primary despite her superdelegate advantage, and Barack Obama went on to win the Presidency. As a Democrat I don't know, practically, what changing the the way superdelegates work will accomplish. Historically superdelegates have always voted with the candidate that won the most votes, and there's not a lot of hard evidence to suggest that the perception of an advantage is enough to help one candidate or hurt another. If we'd made super-delegates vote with the delegate winners of their state, in straight proportion, the outcome wouldn't have changed. No matter how you sliced it, Sanders got fewer votes, and thus a lot fewer delegates.

Oil has occupied a central place in the American economy for the past century — powering houses, automobiles, factories and everything in between. But for the first time oil and gas companies are openly grappling with a less-than-certain future where climate change and related advances in other energy sources make them less dominant. In its annual energy outlook released last week, BP said that it expected oil demand to peak in the next two decades as renewable energy grows and consumers purchase hundreds of millions of electric vehicles. In an outlook released in February, Exxon Mobil projected a peak in demand for gasoline in the coming decades and acknowledged that some of its assets “may not be attractive investments” as a result of the shifting energy market. Exxon Mobil projects 400% growth in wind and solar power by 2040 while BP says renewable energy will make up 40% of growth in energy production in the same period. In some cases, oil companies will shift some of their refineries from making gasoline to making other petroleum products. That posture has changed as the science of climate change has become increasingly undeniable and countries across the globe push the energy sector away from fossil fuels. Despite a burst of environmental deregulation and climate change skepticism from President Donald Trump, most large oil and gas companies today acknowledge climate change and try to push for policy solutions that will still leave them a signifiant role in the energy future. “The global trend is happening no matter what the regulator would do.” But the growing acknowledgment of climate change and the coming evolution of the energy sector is a business decision. More than 20 of the country’s biggest utilities and oil and gas companies lack measured consideration of the risks of climate change, according to the report.