The alternative investment specialist Aquila Capital has launched a green bond with a volume of EUR 50m and a duration of five years via the Norwegian hydropower operator Småkraft AS to finance the company’s further growth. With over 100 hydropower-plants across Norway and an annual energy production of 1 TWh, Småkraft AS is already the biggest independent operator of small-scale hydropower plants in Europe. The additional financing is being secured in the wider context of the company’s goal to double annual production to 2 TWh by 2022.

A new white paper published by Greenberg Traurig, LLP reveals that asset managers are failing to optimize corporate actions decisions on a massive scale. The paper highlights the costs to beneficial owners of suboptimal decisions in corporate actions as well as the regulatory and legal risks asset managers face for systematically failing to optimize corporate actions decisions.

Following the breaking news today that Marriott’s Starwood bookings database has been comprised with half a billion people affected, it highlights the importance of organisations undertaking sufficient security posture checks to avoid such compromises. Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood in 2016 allowed it to utilise its Starwood customer database. Therefore, proactive due diligence during this acquisition period would have helped Marriott to identify the potential cybersecurity risks, and the impact of a potential breach.

Hartford InsurTech Hub, powered by Startupbootcamp, unveils the 2019 cohort of startups for its acceleration program. The chosen startups cover a wide range of abilities, from Property Insurance Claims to Peer-to-Peer Insurance (P2P). The selected ten companies exhibit a diverse range of technologies and insurance types.

The global decline in economic indicators is not a harbinger of a dangerous economic downturn, said Commerzbank chief economist Jörg Krämer on Friday in Frankfurt. “What we see here is just a slowdown of growth,” said Krämer.

On November 29, 2018, Eric Jing, Executive Chairman and CEO of Ant Financial, was appointed to the United Nations’ newly launched Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The global task force will recommend strategies for large-scale digital finance flows to SDGs.

While artificial intelligence is still in its relative infancy in a number of areas, the UK government has recognised the potential for this technology to boost productivity in the financial and legal sectors. As a disruptive technology, AI has the potential to impact every sector. However, with £3 million set aside for projects in these specific industries, we will start to see quick recognition of benefits of this technology – from reduced processing times to cost reductions.

Challenger payments company, MuchBetter, today announced the release of its ‘Bank-in-a-box’ fully managed solution. Bank-in-a-box enables organisations to launch branded production wallets quickly and easily, letting them take control of their users’ payments experience and get to market faster with a sophisticated, compliant and low-cost financial product. 

Today, Ratehub Inc., which connects Canadians to the best financial products in the market, announced it has acquired MoneySense, one of Canada's leading personal finance media brands, from Rogers Media.