Financial Sector
The financial sector plays an important role in the functioning of
economies and societies worldwide. SOMO investigates the ways in which
banks, insurers and other financial conglomerates influence the lives
of people and poverty and sustainable development, especially in
developing countries.
SOMO studies not only private financial enterprises, but also the ways in which the financial sector is being regulated / liberalised internationally.
With these studies, SOMO tries to show how international government policy and CSR initiatives in this sector do or do not lead to sustainable development.
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Financial Sector News
SOMO researcher Rens van Tilburg part of Think Tank for sustainable financial sector
31-01-2012
Abolish bonuses in the financial sector, get regulators to approve new financial products and include social and environmental risks in the risk assessment calculations of bank assets. These are three of the nine recommendations made by the Sustainable Finance Lab in late November to help the finance sector make a contribution to a sustainable economy. SOMO researcher Rens van Tilburg is one of 13 members of this Think Tank of Dutch researchers and was the secretary of the group in 2011.
Dutch financial institutions speculate in food markets
23-12-2011
On the eve of Christmas, the Dutch TV program Zembla broadcast the documentary Trade in Hunger, focusing on the activities of Dutch financial institutions on the derivates market in staple foods such as corn, grains, and sugar. This TV programme is based on the new SOMO report ‘Food Markets in Dutch. Dutch banks and pension funds in agricultural derivatives markets’, published today, revealing the extent to which the largest Dutch banks and pension funds are active on food derivatives markets.
Feeding the Financial Hype
06-12-2011
A new report, Feeding the Financial Hype, is released today by SOMO. The report highlights growing evidence that dramatically increased financial investments in commodity derivatives markets over recent years have caused food prices to soar. This has a negative impact on the poorest people, who spend up to 80 percent of their income on food.
Lack of vision in the EU’s financial reforms
02-11-2011
On the eve of the G20 Summit in Cannes, SOMO has analysed the European Union’s financial reform process, agreed on by the G20, in its new report “The missing dimension. How European financial reforms ignore developing countries and sustainability”. SOMO concludes that the EU’s financial reforms have been not only much too slow and too weak – aggravating the debt and bank problems in the Eurozone.
The failure of financial reforms through undemocratic means
30-10-2011
New issue of the EU Financial Reforms newsletter. Just before the G-20 Summit on 3-4 November 2011 in Cannes, the global financial system was once again at a state of crisis. Serious and escalating problems are coming from the Eurozone and European banks that own bonds from heavily indebted European countries. This issue of the Newsletter provides a brief overview of how the Euro crisis and bank crisis have so far been (mis)handled at European level. It also reports on one step in the right direction: an official proposal by the European Commission (EC) to impose a financial transaction tax (FTT) at EU or Eurozone level. In contrast, another new long awaited EC proposal for better control over financial markets (MiFID) fails to deal particularly with food speculation and dis-functioning of the markets as seen during the Euro crisis.
