Italy: Outlook Italian insurance market improves

Fitch Ratings has revised Italy's Outlook to Stable from Negative. At the same time the agency has affirmed Italy's Long-term foreign and local currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) at 'BBB+'. The issue ratings on Italy's senior unsecured foreign and local currency bonds were also affirmed at 'BBB+'. 

The Country Ceiling has been affirmed at 'AA+' and the Short-term foreign currency IDR at 'F2'.

Fitch has also  revised its outlook on the Italian insurance market from negative to stable following stronger-than-expected first-half results from Italian insurers.

The change also reflects Fitch's expectation that Italian insurers' profit and capital adequacy will be resilient despite the country dipping back into recession.

GGGD will peak at 135% of GDP in 2014, marginally higher than Fitch's previous forecast (133% of GDP), due to weaker nominal GDP growth. Fitch expects GGGD to decline slowly and remain above 130% of GDP until 2017, compared with the 'BBB' median of 40%. The high debt leaves very limited fiscal space to respond to any adverse shock.

The new government of Matteo Renzi announced a structural reform agenda with an ambitious timetable and confirmed in the 2014 Stability Programme the previous governments' commitment to the eurozone fiscal framework, in particular, keeping deficit below 3% of GDP in 2014 and maintaining the medium-term fiscal consolidation path.

Almere-Digest

Insurance Industry: SURE Autumn editiom highlights Insurance developments around the world

A new edition of Koster verzekeringen b.v. international internet publication SURE, with highlights from and around the global insurance world, is available on-line.    

 KOSTER verzekeringen b.v. is an independent Dutch insurance company in Alphen aan den Rijn, established in 1985 and presently employing some 40 highly specialized employees

What makes KOSTER Verzekeringen b.v. particularly interesting is their corporate philosophy. Chairman of the Board Wim Koster says about this philosophy: "we don't just sell insurance policies but instead we helps our customers during the buying process".

For a free subscription to SURE  - contact info@koster.nl

Almere-Digest

EU-US Trade Negotiations: Germany to take control of EU/US trade deal, leak suggests- by Geoffrey Smith

U.S. tech companies hoping for unfettered access to the E.U.’s market under a major new trade deal got the bureaucratic equivalent of the ice bucket challenge Thursday.

A draft document obtained by the website Euractiv sketching out how the top jobs in the new European Commission will be handed out suggested that Germany’s Guenter Oettinger will take responsibility for the E.U. side of the negotiations for the next five years.

Oettinger is a long-time political ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, and analysts say his appointment would ensure Europe will take a tough line on the new ‘Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’.

TTIP, hailed by its advocates as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to break down remaining trade barriers between the U.S. and E.U., has run into a storm of protest in Germany–traditionally one of the biggest advocates of free trade–over concerns that it will allow big companies too many rights to sue governments.

In addition, the ongoing tensions over U.S. spying on its biggest European ally has made German public opinion wary of giving free rein to the–mostly U.S.-based–companies that dominate the internet and the world of big data.

“Merkel is concerned that the political environment around TTIP has become completely toxic,” says Pavel Swidlicki, an analyst with the think-tank Open Europe in London. “This is a smart move.”

Note EU-Digest: the EU interests are in good hands with Mrs Merkel and Germany.

Read more: Germany to take control of EU/US trade deal, leak suggests

The Netherlands: Banking Industry - ING Bank reported a sharp rise in second-quarter net profit

NG NV reported a sharp rise in second-quarter net profit, boosted by one-time gains and lower provisions for bad loans, as the Dutch bank edges closer to fully rid itself from Dutch government support.

The Netherlands' largest bank by assets on March 3 said net profit for the quarter came in at €1.07 billion ($1.43 billion), compared with €895 million in the same period last year as profit at its insurance business more than quadrupled to €245 million despite lower operational results. 
 
The insurance business benefited from revaluations on a private equity portfolio and a €79 million gain on a closed book of Japanese variable annuities.

Net profit at its banking business dropped by 1.6% to €806 million, despite a 34% drop in loan loss provisions to €405 million, which was offset by higher taxes, a payment for its contribution to the nationalization of Dutch peer SNS Reaal in 2013 and restructuring costs at its Dutch Retail bank.

EU-Digest

Europe's job market has strengths the US doesn't - by Paul Wiseman and Christopher S. Rugaber

Compare unemployment rates, and America's job market looks much stronger than Europe's. The U.S. rate for August, being released Friday, is expected to be a near-normal 6.1 percent. In the 18 countries that use the euro currency, by contrast, it's a collective 11.5 percent.

Yet by some measures, Europe is doing better. It's been more successful in keeping people working, letting the disabled stay on the job and boosting the proportion of women in the workforce.

And Europeans in their prime working years — ages 25 to 54 — are more likely to be employed than Americans are.

Fewer than 77 percent of prime-age Americans have jobs, compared with 80 percent in Belgium, 81 percent in France and 82 percent in the Netherlands, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

If Americans 25 to 54 were as likely to be working as Germans the same age, 8.3 million more Americans would have jobs.

''Where we used to talk about the U.S. having a high-powered labor market in the late 1990s, Germany has that now,'' says Jacob Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

It's true, of course, that the unemployed have a much harder time finding a job in, say, Spain or Greece than the United States. Spain's unemployment rate is nearly 25 percent. For people under 25, the rate tops 50 percent.

Though the eurozone's overall unemployment rate is 11.5 percent, individual countries include low-rate nations like Germany and Austria (4.9 percent) as well as some with much higher unemployment than the United States: Portugal (14 percent), Italy (12.6 percent), France (10.3 percent), Belgium (8.5 percent).

Yet Josh Bivens, research director at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, says America's relatively low ''headline unemployment rate is painting too rosy a picture of how the U.S. labor market is doing.''

The fall in the U.S. unemployment rate has been exaggerated by rising numbers of adults neither working nor looking for work. The government counts people as unemployed only if they're looking for a job. When many stop looking, the unemployment rate can fall even if few people are hired.

The share of Americans 16 to 64 either working or seeking work has fallen to 72.7 percent from 75.3 percent at the end of 2007, when the Great Recession began. In the 28 countries in the European Union, the figure has risen to 72.3 percent from 70.5 percent in late 2007. The United States and Europe calculate their employment rates in broadly similar ways.

No single reason explains why prime-age employment and workforce participation trends are weaker in the United States.

Read more: Europe's job market has strengths the US doesn't - Worcester Telegram & Gazette - telegram.com

ISIS "Terrorists and killers will be followed to the gates of hell and punished"

President Obama made his strongest statements yet against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Wednesday, promising that the U.S. will “degrade and destroy” the extremist group after they beheaded a second American journalist.
 
“Our objective is clear and that is to degrade and destroy ISIL so it’s no longer a threat—not just to Iraq but also to the region and to the United States,” Obama said, referring to ISIS by their alternate name.

On Tuesday, ISIS released a video of the beheading of Steven Sotloff, 31, a freelance journalist who worked for Time and Foreign Policy and was seized in Syria last August. His killer appears to be the same masked jihadist who killed James Foley exactly two weeks prior. The video’s authenticity was confirmed by President Obama and American officials early Wednesday.

Note EU-Digest: ISIS better remember what happened to Bin Laden..They will be followed to the gates of hell and will be brought to Justice !

Read more:President Obama: We will ‘degrade and destroy’ ISIS | MSNBC

EU-US Trade Negotiations: Bring on the defeat of the EU-US free trade deal - by Nick Dearden

In spite of previous suggestions to the contrary, the proposed EU-US free trade deal will, after all, include the NHS, trade minister Lord Livingston admitted on Monday.

The deal, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP, is a priority of David Cameron’s government – a “once in a generation” opportunity. But officials have been taken aback by the extent of public hostility.

At the heart of this opposition is the fear that the TTIP will give big business vast new powers over public services like the NHS, and undermine rights at work, environmental protection and food safety standards. According to a poll commissioned by Unite, 68% of people in marginal constituencies oppose the inclusion of the NHS as part of the deal. Even among Tory voters, just 23% supported its inclusion.

After weeks of the government telling the public that “the NHS won’t be affected”, Lord Livingston has admitted that Cameron won’t exclude the NHS, because the TTIP is too good an opportunity to sell our “world class health services” to the US market.

This also means US health corporations would gain new “rights” to sell their health services here. And should they be impaired from doing so by, let’s imagine, a future government abolishing the Health and Social Care Act, those corporations will have the right to sue the British government through a parallel legal structure created by the TTIP. They won’t even have to go through our domestic court system.

Read more: Bring on the defeat of the EU-US free trade deal | Nick Dearden | Comment is free | theguardian.com