Luca Rossi

Wegelin, the oldest Swiss bank, is about to close permanently after pleading guilty in a New York court to helping Americans evade taxes. The bank, established in 1741, has agreed to pay $57.8m (£36m) in fines to US authorities. Wegelin admitted that it helped more than one hundred Americans to hide $1.2bn from the Internal […]

The US has ended a sweeping antitrust investigation on Google without imposing any sanctions to its core search business. The decision of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was welcomed by supporters who thought that the investigation was brought up by rivals as Microsoft to limit Google’s rise. The FTC announced a settlement that limits to […]

There is no time to pour champagne. After the fraught deal on the fiscal cliff that averted $600 billion of more taxes and spending cuts, the US Congress will have to face many issues regarding the situation of the biggest economy in the world. The Senate bill, in fact, doesn’t reduce the US national debt, […]

US Republicans have cancelled a tax vote in the House of Representatives to avoid the fiscal cliff, the automatic combination of tax increases and spending cuts that will hit US economy if politicians won’t agree on a deal before the first of January. After calling a meeting of his Republican party’s lawmakers, the House speaker […]

US patent authorities rejected Apple’s Inc’s key “pinch-to-zoom” patent, the second piece of  bad news in the last two months for the iPhone maker in its battle against Samsung Electronics. The United States Patent and Trademark Office declared that the “pinch-to-zoom” patent, that helped Apple win $1.05 billion in damages against Samsung in a jury […]

They are just doing their job What do the rating agencies do? They rate the debt issued by a company or a government. After analysts’ recommendations, a committee of senior staff  formally decides a rating (Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have recently downgraded the rating of France by one notch). Every prime minister or CEO […]

The Swiss bank UBS has agreed to pay $1.5bn (£940m) to US, UK and Swiss regulators for attempting to manipulate the Libor inter-bank lending rate. It is the second major bank to be fined over Libor after Barclays’ was ordered to pay £290m to UK and US authorities in the summer, where CEO Bob Diamond […]

UK consumer prices inflation (CPI) remained unchanged in November at 2.7%, according to the Office of National Statistics. The fastest price rises were seen in the cost of fruit, bread, cereals and energy bills, while car fuel, plane tickets and beer prices fell from the month before. On the other hand, the Retail prices index […]

Has anyone ever rated the credit rating agencies? The answer is simple: no. In 2011 the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published a long report with a generic downgrade of all the agencies, without naming them and asking for a further effort not to repeat the mistakes of the past.  A second report published […]

Silver will shine, Oil will burn out FORGET GOLD, 2013 WILL BE SILVER’S YEAR Silver has always been regarded as gold’s weaker brother. But the white commodity might steal gold’s shine for 2013 due to a number of factors. Gold has risen 580% since 2001, but silver has risen 725% over the same period. If […]