The shareholders of the European Investment Fund (EIF) have approved a 64% increase of the EIF’s share capital from €4.5 billion to €7.4 billion. The EIF’s capital increase will bring substantial additional resources to scale up support for the SME financing market, and venture and growth capital activity. The capital increase will enable the EIF to play a key role in rolling out InvestEU, the EU’s investment programme for 2021-2027, thereby also supporting the green and digital transformation of the...

Read more

One of the potentially frightening things about being a manager is the need to make decisions; many, many decisions. This is typically more of a problem for new managers than it is for experienced managers, but it would not hurt either type of manager to brush up on how to make better management decisions. The rest of this article will mainly focus on “bigger” management decisions, or those that happen less frequently and are more likely to have a...

Read more

What if the key for businesses and brands looking to improve performance in an increasingly digital world isn’t digital transformation? At a time when so much of the interaction between businesses and their customers is moving towards digital channels and tools, many organizations are feeling the pressure to engage in “digital first” strategies to drive performance, optimize operations and protect revenues. These efforts — often characterized as a digital transformation or digital journey — are intensely focused on the addition...

Read more

Recently, the European Commission announced two new regulations, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). These regulations aim to set new rules governing the digital market in the European Union. According to the European Commission, the DSA is required to safeguard a digital space that respects Internet users' fundamental rights when using digital services. Furthermore, the legislators seek to establish a level playing field allowing further innovation, growth, and competitiveness in the digital sector. While the DSA introduces...

Read more

The EACC, in partnership with the International Property Tax Institute (IPTI), wants to keep its members up to date with the latest developments in property taxes in the USA and Europe. IPTI has put together a selection of brief reports from articles contained in IPTI Xtracts which can be found on its website (www.ipti.org). UNITED STATES New York: De Blasio to revive property tax reform At a state Senate hearing, de Blasio committed to restarting hearings on fixing the oft-derided system and...

Read more

Let’s start this article with some interesting facts about Virtual Reality (VR). In 2020, Apple acquired a Virtual Reality event streaming company called NextVR. This company records events like shows and sports games in VR and develops its first headset to be launched in 2022. According to Bloomberg, this is a more ambitious augmented reality product that will present an interactive 3D digital environment for games, watching videos, and virtual communication.Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, says that both VR and AR...

Read more

Most employers are increasingly concerned about the retention of key and non-key employees. When an employee leaves, it can be expensive to replace them, not to mention the loss of productivity and knowledge. A recent study has shown that many currently employed workers are unhappy in their current position. Some of the primary reasons for this unhappiness are the general feeling of being unappreciated and the thought that the grass is greener elsewhere. Given this situation, some sectors may experience a...

Read more

Technology facilitates remote work in ways that, years ago, just were not possible. Take telecommuting. These days, all kinds of jobs that had to be performed at an employer site are now performed remotely. Some call center workers, for example, now work from home using home telephones — no brick-and-mortar call center needed. Some secretaries now telecommute using laptops and the internet. Some teachers now teach remotely using laptops and video links. There are architects, doctors, lawyers and judges who, these...

Read more

On January 18, 2021, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), comprised of all national supervisory authorities (SAs) of the European Union, published draft guidelines for data breach notification1 (the Guidelines). The Guidelines provide useful insight into how regulators apply the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) personal data breach notifications rules. Specifically, they describe six common types of personal data breaches (i.e., ransomware, data exfiltration attacks, internal human risk, lost or stolen device and paper documents, misposted data, and social engineering attacks), and...

Read more