Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), made a pertinent point when she described tax as “the lifeblood of modern states”. Addressing finance ministers at the recent Arab Fiscal Forum in Abu Dhabi, she drove home the idea of introducing Value Added Tax (VAT) to shore up GCC economies. Her call for the Gulf states to introduce ...

Call it the new normal for European bank earnings. Standard Chartered shares plunged by the most in more than three years on Tuesday after the bank posted a “surprise” 2015 pretax loss of $1.5 billion, somewhat different from the $1.37 billion average profit estimate from 20 analysts. On Monday, HSBC delivered a “surprise” fourth-quarter pretax loss of $858 million, rather ...

Four years into the Obama administration’s “Asia-Pacific Rebalance” and on the eve of a tumultuous national election, questions about the coming consistency of U.S. foreign policy are at the forefront of every policymaker’s mind. Yet even without these disruptive factors, there is one area in which the United States should continue to provide coordination, collaboration, and commitment with allies and ...