- The National Institute of Economic and Social Research's forecast of world output growth this year is unchanged at 3.0 per cent – the slowest annual growth rate since the 2009 recession. World growth is expected to strengthen to 3.2 per cent next year and 3.6 per cent in 2018, but to remain slower than before the global financial crisis.
- Downside risks to the forecast include economic downturns in the advanced economies that central banks may lack ammunition to counter, as well as financial instability as a result of low and negative interest rates. These point to a need for more balanced policies to promote expansion, with fiscal policy playing a greater role.
- With trade growth in recent years already reduced to half its pre-crisis rate, action to resist protectionist pressure and to promote further progress with international economic integration is vital.
In the advanced economies, growth has generally remained mediocre. International repercussions of Brexit have thus far been limited to the effects of a further fall in sterling. In the United States, recent data have been mixed: the appreciation of the dollar since 2012 has remained one restraining factor and political uncertainty ahead of the elections may have been another. In the Euro Area, there has been no progress since the spring in reducing high unemployment. Even where unemployment is low – notably the United States, Japan and Germany, as well as the UK – limited wage pressures raise questions about the true tightness of labour markets. Inflation has remained below targets, by wide margins in the Euro Area and Japan. Inflation is closer to target in the US, and the Fed is widely expected to raise rates in December for a second time in the current upturn.
The performance of some key emerging market economies has improved: deep recessions in Brazil and Russia are easing, with inflation falling towards targets. The gradual slowing of China’s GDP growth seems on track, but a rise in credit expansion has added to financial risks.
One set of risks that has increasingly come to the fore concerns monetary policy in the advanced economies. The scope for easing monetary policy further is limited. It could pose increasing risks to financial stability, including by threatening the profitability of banks. In addition, central bank asset purchases are increasingly constrained by limited availability of suitable assets. A further, developing, preoccupation as the economic recovery matures is that low interest rates could leave inadequate ammunition for central banks to counter recession if it were to strike. These considerations point to the need for more balanced macroeconomic policies, including expansionary fiscal policy in many cases and structural reforms that boost demand as well as potential output.
Risks related to the threat to the internationally open global economy arising from the advocacy of protectionist, nationalist, and inward-looking policies, including by ‘populist’ politicians, have lately gained increased attention. This is occurring in the context of already slowing expansion of international trade and finance. Growth in the volume of world trade since the global financial crisis has been half the average rate of expansion during the previous three decades, and has barely matched the growth of global GDP. History carries many examples of economic prosperity being stymied by defensive, inward-looking policies, and action to resume progress with international economic integration is vital.
Iana Liadze, Research Fellow at NIESR, said “With our forecast of world output growth unchanged for this year at 3 per cent we are witnessing the slowest annual growth since the 2009 recession. Even if world growth strengthens to 3.6 per cent in 2018 as we expect, it will remain slower than before the financial crisis. Low interest rates and the limited availability of suitable assets for central banks to purchase suggest the scope for easing monetary policy further is limited. As long as this situation persists it will be up to other arms of macroeconomic policy to minimise the effect from any future recessionary shock.”
Source: National Institute of Economic and Social Research
Sage, a market leader in cloud accounting software, announced at Sage Summit 2016 its strong commitment to future technologies, with a focus on new and existing partnerships that power business growth. Revealed during CEO Stephen Kelly’s keynote address, which opened the world’s largest gathering of entrepreneurs and business builders, Kelly spoke about how, through the use of the latest technologies and tools, Sage is levelling the playing field for entrepreneurs – and it’s just the start of the technology revolution all entrepreneurs and business builders of all sizes need to be a part of to compete and grow.
Investing in the future with the introduction of Sage Cloud
The dedication to helping businesses grow is a personal crusade of Kelly’s. Following the investment of £139m on research and development during FY15, the Sage CEO used the keynote as a platform to set out how all Sage products will now be connected to the cloud, with new mobile, social, chatbot and IoT offerings in the pipeline for the entire portfolio.
Sage Cloud will allow businesses to integrate all activity across Sage products quickly and easily. It will also make it possible for Sage customers to activate integrations with partner products within a few clicks and will eliminate the need for maintenance or change due to product upgrades. Sage further pledged its dedication to the developer community with the launch of Sage Marketplace, a new open, API-driven platform for Independent Software Vendors to showcase their Sage developer add-ons and apps.
Industry firsts – leapfrogging the competition
Another highlight was the official launch of Sage’s new admin bot, Pegg, a smart assistant that allows users to track expenses via their chosen messaging app. Pegg removes the complexities and enables entrepreneurs to manage finances through conversation. By digitising information at the point of capture, it takes away the pain from receipts and expenses, eradicating the need for paper and data entry.
Powerful new partnerships
This coincides with the news that Sage has partnered with Slack, which will act as one of the core messaging channels connected to Pegg. Having recently joined as Global Director for Mobile Product Management, Sage’s Kriti Sharma said: “With the rise of freelancing and the sharing economy, the number of small businesses is growing exponentially. Most of these business owners use messaging apps, and with Pegg we aim to bridge the gap between these apps and work, rendering accounting invisible to the end user and making running a business as simple as sending a text. We’re incredibly excited to partner with Slack, the fastest growing enterprise messaging app; together we share the vision that the future of the workplace is conversational, easy and fun.” Announced with a demonstration live on stage, the accounting industry’s first bot, Pegg is available now in Beta. New users can register to sign up here for Slack or here for Facebook messenger.
In an interactive live demo, Sage’s new EVP of Product Marketing, Jennifer Warawa, showed how the combined solution of Sage Live and TomTom Telematics works. The new software integration allows businesses with fleets of vehicles - small or big - to seamlessly record mileage and automate expense reports. Because Sage Live is running on the Salesforce platform it can easily use existing integrations with third parties such as TomTom WEBFLEET. Via the fleet management, service journey data is automatically available in Sage Live.
There were several new partnership announcements, as well as details on how existing ones have strengthened. In front of an audience of 15,000 and over 35,000 on LIVE stream, Stephen Kelly announced that Sage’s award-winning real-time accounting solution, Sage Live, will harness the power of Salesforce Lightning. Via the integration, Sage customers will benefit from Salesforce’s new Lightning Experience – a reimagined consumer-like experience that’s modern, efficient and smart – which will be accessible via Sage Live across every device.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella joined via video to announce the coming together of Microsoft Office 365 and Sage 50 – making Sage the first ever software company to partner with the platform. The Sage CEO also welcomed Sir Richard Branson to the stage, where they participated in a conversation on their shared vision of the future of business and giving back.
Champion of Business Builders
Sage’s commitment to supporting entrepreneurs at every stage of their growth was underlined with Kelly revealing new stats on entrepreneurs’ dissatisfaction with the support they get from the US Government. He also reiterated his criticism of ‘out of touch’ events like the World Economic Forum in Davos and announced a series of policy events around the world
The Giving Economy
Broadening out to touch on Sage as a participant in its communities, the keynote highlighted how Sage will expand its corporate philanthropy initiative, Sage Foundation, through work with three distinct communities; military veterans, young people and women. Sage’s Chief People Officer Sandra Campopiano launched a new open grant process with a donation to an inspiring Chicago charity that seeks to inspire more women to work in the technology sector.
She awarded a $50,000 donation from Sage to Brave Initiatives, a program encouraging high school girls to see themselves as capable coders and tune them into community issues.
Sage CEO Stephen Kelly said: “It was almost impossible to tell the story of the technology revolution at Sage in one keynote. With a more connected world comes new demands on our hero business builders, and we are fired up by doing everything we can to support entrepreneurs in following their passion. We are working on making concepts like the Internet of Things, machine learning, blockchain and data sciences into a reality for businesses, accountants and partners. This is way more than cloud and mobile-first. It’s designing and building technologies that truly power businesses, freeing entrepreneurs to grow and win.”
For those not attending Sage Summit 2016, all of the keynotes and more can be viewed at the virtual event http://bit.ly/29N0zbE
More Information on Sage Live can be found here
(Source: Sage)
Sage, a market leader in cloud accounting software, welcome over 15,000 entrepreneurs and Small & Medium business owners from around the world to Chicago for this year’s Sage Summit, the world’s largest gathering of entrepreneurs and business builders.
The theme of the event (July 25-28), which is expected to almost double the capacity of last year’s event in New Orleans, features some of the biggest stars of the entertainment and business world, invited to share their passion for business, life, and helping others.
Sage is expected to unveil new product launches, with CEO Stephen Kelly using his keynote speech to announce new tools, technologies and partnerships. A donation to an inspiring Chicago charity will also be announced and surprise guests will join the keynote speakers throughout the week, including local Chicago heroes. To close the annual event, The Killers will perform hits like ‘Mr Brightside’ and ‘When we were young’.
Joining Stephen Kelly on the keynote agenda is Sir Richard Branson, alongside:
Gwyneth Paltrow, Oscar-winning Actress, founder and CCO of goop, a lifestyle newsletter that sets trends.
Zooey Deschanel, actress, singer-songwriter, and co-founder of HelloGiggles, a positive online community for women which was recently acquired by Time Inc.
Robert Herjavec, founder and CEO of Herjavec Group and investor on ABC’s Emmy Award-winning hit show “Shark Tank”
Daymond John, Founder/CEO of FUBU, Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship, star of ABC's Shark Tank and CEO of The Shark Group.
Ashton Kutcher, actor, entrepreneur, tech investor, and producer
Yancey Strickler, cofounder and CEO of Kickstarter
Bringing together Sage’s customers, partners, and colleagues, Sage Summit is designed to encourage learning and networking, while celebrating the power of the global entrepreneurial Business community.
For the first time, Sage Summit will have a dedicated series of events for millennials to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs, building on Sage’s commitment to invest in programmes to give this group of talent the right business foundations.
Stephen Kelly, CEO of Sage, said: “This week, Chicago becomes the hub for the world’s entrepreneurs. This community is the most powerful driver of economic prosperity in the global economy, creating two thirds of all jobs. This week, we celebrate these business builders, and we also seek to support them and inspire them, giving them a voice on the world stage and creating the technology of tomorrow. Sage Summit will be like rocket fuel for their businesses and we can’t wait to welcome them to this unforgettable event.’
Sage Summit is being supported by Microsoft as Titanium Sponsor, Salesforce as Diamond Sponsor, Fairsail, Scanforce, U.S. Bank, and Website Pipeline as Platinum Sponsors and Aatrix, Acom Solutions, Altec, Certify, Edisoft, Expensify, Kimble, Nextec, One, Vertex, ZAP as Gold Sponsors.
(Source: Sage)
After a particularly strong close for the US IPO markets in 2014, the first quarter of 2015 took a sharp turn with only 38 deals, which raised a total of $5.62 billion (€5.2 billion), according to EY’s Global IPO 2015 Q1 report.
While the first quarter is traditionally slow, this is a drop of 46.5% in the number of deals and a 53% drop in capital raised from Q1 2014. Historically, the US market led the global IPO markets, but for one of the first quarters, it lands behind Asia-Pacific and EMEIA. However, EY forecasts that, with healthy US economic conditions and a backlog of companies looking to exit, the 2015 IPO market should shape up to be a strong year.
A total of 291 companies made initial public offerings in 2014, which was the best year for IPOs in over a decade. 2015 started at a later and different pace, as the first deal wasn’t even offered until January 16. “Quite simply, the pipeline ran dry in 1Q15,” said Jackie Kelley, EY Global and Americas IPO Leader “Deals that were originally slated for 2015 were pushed out in Q4, 2014, during favorable conditions. This was a response to the October volatility.”
March looked set to be a stronger month for IPOs with at least 15 deals being offered, up from the 10 in February. The most recent filings also saw deals worth $100 million and above (€93 million) entering the pipeline.
The energy and power sector led the way, accounting for approximately 25% of the proceeds, followed by healthcare (21%) and technology (18%).
The largest player on the US exchanges was an MLP offering from Columbia Pipeline Partners LP, which raised $1.24 billion (€1.15 billion). When compared with the larger ticket IPOs in 2014 such as Alibaba, which raised $25 billion (€23.2 billion), or Synchrony Financial, which raised $2.95 billion (€2.7 billion), there was no considerable IPO player this quarter. This is on trend with the average deal size continuing to decline, EY stated.
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EY also highlighted the growing pipeline of PE and VC backed deals. VC-backed offerings represented 42% of all the deals.
“The economic health of the U.S. can’t be denied with unemployment falling to 5.5% this month, a six year low,” said Kelley. “While there is heavy anticipation of how the Federal Reserve will address interest rates in June, strong investor confidence matched with even stronger company earnings has helped the markets remain resilient to volatility.”
President Barack Obama
President Obama delivered a defiant and upbeat State of the Union Address earlier this week, claiming that 2014 had been a ‘breakthrough year for America’.
“Our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999. Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis. More of our kids are graduating than ever before. More of our people are insured than ever before. And we are as free from the grip of foreign oil as we’ve been in almost 30 years,” President Obama said.
“At this moment - with a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry, booming energy production - we have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on Earth. It’s now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next 15 years and for decades to come,” he said.
“Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?”
Talking at Capitol Hill, President Obama stressed the importance of what he called ‘middle class economics’, calling on Americans to embrace equality
“Middle-class economics is… when everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, everyone plays by the same set of rules. We don’t just want everyone to share in America’s success, we want everyone to contribute to our success,” he stated.
According to the President, middle-class economics means helping working families feel more secure in a world of constant change. Top of the list is helping people to afford childcare, college, health care, a home and retirement.
“Middle-class economics works. Expanding opportunity works. And these policies will continue to work as long as politics don’t get in the way. We can’t slow down businesses or put our economy at risk with government shutdowns or fiscal showdowns. We can’t put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance, or unravelling the new rules on Wall Street, or refighting past battles on immigration when we’ve got to fix a broken system,” President Obama said.
According to President Obama, since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all advanced economies combined. The country’s manufacturing sector has added almost 800,000 new jobs. He also added that there are millions of Americans who work in jobs that didn’t even exist 10 or 20 years ago - jobs at companies like Google, eBay and Tesla.
“No one knows for certain which industries will generate the jobs of the future. But we do know we want them here in America. We know that. Middle-class economics is all about building the most competitive economy anywhere, the place where businesses want to locate and hire.
President Obama also put a call out to further develop America’s infrastructure, calling on a bipartisan infrastructure plan that could create more than 30 times as many jobs per year, and make this country stronger for decades to come. “Twenty-first century businesses need twenty-first century infrastructure - modern ports, and stronger bridges, faster trains and the fastest Internet,” he remarked.
International trade and export were also on the agenda.
“Twenty-first century businesses, including small businesses, need to sell more American products overseas. Today, our businesses export more than ever, and exporters tend to pay their workers higher wages. But as we speak, China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and our businesses at a disadvantage. Why would we let that happen? We should write those rules. We should level the playing field. That’s why I’m asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers, with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren’t just free, but are also fair,” said President Obama.
“95% of the world’s customers live outside our borders. We can’t close ourselves off from those opportunities. More than half of manufacturing executives have said they’re actively looking to bring jobs back from China. So let’s give them one more reason to get it done.”
