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European Edition
6th May 2021

THE HOT STORY

Norwegian oil firms and labour unions reach wage deal

Norwegian oil companies and labour unions have agreed a wage deal that has prevented the potential outbreak of a strike among workers later this year. The Norwegian Oil and Gas Association (NOG) said each worker’s annual wage will increase by 20,100 Norwegian crowns ($2,409). The Lederne, Safe and Industri Energi unions have all signed the agreement. The negotiations covered 7,000 workers, mostly rig operators, drillers and service staff at 14 companies including Equinor, Aker BP, Lundin Energy and ConocoPhillips.

Reuters

WORKFORCE

No full-time return to the office for over a million people in UK

Almost all of 50 of the UK's biggest employers questioned by the BBC say they do not plan to bring staff back to the office full-time. Some 43 of the companies said they would embrace a mix of home and office working, with staff encouraged to work from home two to three days a week. Organisations cited "smart working" and "flexibility" as reasons for introducing hybrid working, and many suggested that workers would be able to make their own choices about how often they come in to the office. Danny Harmer, chief people officer at insurance giant Aviva, said 95% of its workers said they'd like to be able to spend some of their time working flexibly and remotely in different locations. Mark Read, chief executive of advertising firm WPP, said: "We're never going to go back to working the way we used to work." But he noted that the new ways of using the office require careful planning. "People are working from home three to four days a week so we probably need 20% less space, but we're not going to do that if everyone's working from home on Mondays and Fridays." Only a few of the companies surveyed by the BBC have been shutting offices, with some saying they will wait until leases run out.

BBC News

Slovakia to have a permanent short-time work scheme

Slovakia will cover a proportion of employees’ salaries via a kurzarbeit or short-time work scheme from the beginning of next year when an employer is not able to assign work within an originally agreed scope. The scheme will kick in when an employer – due to an obstacle on the employer’s side - cannot assign work to at least a third of employees in the scope of 10% of weekly working time at least. Financial assistance for employers, for each employee and each hour of obstacles at work, is to account for 60% of the average hourly earnings of the given employee.

The Slovak Spectator

Get ready for the new perk culture

The FT considers the coming post-pandemic perk culture, centred on concerns around health, financial stability and flexibility, and transforming how “benefits” are defined and precipitating an overhaul of corporate practices.

Financial Times

CORPORATE

Italy weighs extending tax breaks for bank mergers

Italy is weighing an extension of tax breaks to mid-2022 to encourage corporate mergers in the country's fragmented banking sector. A draft bill also reintroduces for the current year tax benefits for companies shedding bad loans which had expired in December. The tax breaks for company tie-ups, which are due to expire in December, are a key element of an incentive package that Italy's former government had prepared to convince UniCredit, the country's no.2 bank, to take on loss-making lender Monte dei Paschi (MPS).

Reuters

STRATEGY

Brexit freedoms let BoE cut red tape

The Bank of England is set to use its newfound Brexit freedoms to scrap red tape, enabling small lenders to grow and compete more successfully. Officials are looking at how they can liberate smaller banks and building societies that operate only in the UK from regulation designed to control the world's largest financial institutions. The Telegraph says the BoE is “taking inspiration from the US,” where there are separate rules for small lenders so they can avoid unnecessary compliance costs – an approach banned within the EU. Victoria Saporta, executive director of prudential policy at the Bank, said it is beginning a post-Brexit “move from ‘rule taker’ to ‘rule maker’” for the City. David Postings, chief executive of UK Finance, said: “An efficient, innovative and competitive financial services industry is critical to the future growth and prosperity of the UK economy.”

The Daily Telegraph

LEGAL

Swedbank fined again over money laundering controls

Swedbank has been fined 46.6m Swedish crowns ($5.50m) by the Nasdaq Stockholm, which cited past issues with the Stockholm-headquartered lender’s anti-money laundering controls. Swedbank CEO Jens Henriksson said: "During the last year, the bank has undertaken several measures to strengthen processes for the disclosure of information. Today´s decision means that yet another issue . . . is closed.” The latest penalty comes after the bank was fined a record 4bn crowns by the Swedish financial watchdog just over a year ago over other deficiencies in its work against money laundering.

Reuters

INTERNATIONAL

Compliance officers have a growing role in corporate sustainability efforts

US companies including Dell and Western Union are relying more on the work of their chief compliance officers as they seek to demonstrate to ESG-focused shareholders their commitment to sustainability. Such companies believe that the role played by compliance in ensuring that employees act ethically is key to corporate efforts to attract sustainability-minded investors. “A compliance officer is viewed as a leader in ethics, in good corporate practices,” observes Taylor Pullins, a former sustainability director for Houston-based oil and gas producer Noble Energy. “Right there, they have a role in disclosing internally to employees and to the market about why they are a responsible corporation.” The Wall Street Journal notes the legal risks associated with ESG commitments, as regulators take steps to protect investors from claims that could be viewed as deceptive — or so-called “greenwashing.” Dave Curran, who leads law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison’s sustainability practice, says: “Over the last couple of years, [ESG] has become a mountaintop of risk . . . Lawyers and compliance executives are getting more and more involved in everything from pressure-testing disclosures, to analysing processes and procedures, to tracking, measuring and monitoring these programs.”

Wall Street Journal

Indian businesses urge government to restrict non-essential economic activity

Business leaders in India are calling for a de facto lockdown in the country as companies struggle to muster enough healthy staff amid the latest Covid surge. Uday Kotak, president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), said: “We need to curtail non-essential economic activity and services for a very short while to break the chain. Essential services like oxygen, supply of medicine and food items have to continue,” adding that the government should turn to the “nationwide maximal response measure at the highest level.” Automotive companies including Maruti Suzuki, Hero MotoCorp, JCB India, MG Motor, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India have stopped production temporarily in the interest of employee safety, and service sector firms including Kotak Mahindra Bank, TCS and Infosys have adopted remote working strategies. CII has suggested proactive measures including making testing available for employees whose presence at the workplace is necessary, and making quarantine facilities available for infected workers.

Economic Times

Financial Times

Bank of Israel urges more incentives to get people back to work

Bank of Israel wants the government to do more to get people back to work amid concerns among policymakers about the slow recovery of the labour market from the pandemic. The monetary policy committee (MPC) observed that employers are finding it difficult to recruit workers, notably in sectors like restaurants that were closed during lockdowns. "An adjustment process is expected between demand for work and the supply of work, which can last for some time. At the same time, the committee noted the concern that government policy does not create enough incentives for workers to return to the labour market," the minutes of Monday’s MPC meeting said.

Reuters

One in six Australian public servants sexually harassed in workplace

The results of a survey of more than 3,000 public servants in Australia show that almost 16% have reported sexual harassment. The Guardian says the results of the poll of 3,280 workers by the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) will add pressure on the government to do more to combat workplace misconduct. Although the poll indicates that almost one in six public servants has experienced sexual harassment, only one-third of incidents were reported, according to the survey. Two-thirds of incidents went unreported due to fears they would not be impartially investigated.

The Guardian

OTHER

Central bank digital cash could 'challenge' big banks

A senior Bank of France official says central bank digital cash could give provide new types of financial firms with access to ultra-cheap central bank funding and reduce the role of big lenders in settling large transfers. Central banks, including the European Central Bank (ECB), are preparing the ground on issuing digital cash. They see its flexibility as key to improving payment systems, easing some of the complexities of negative interest rates and ensuring that the spread of digital currencies is controlled. The Bank of France is part of the ECB's research into how a future digital euro could be used both in wholesale bank-to-bank lending and in retail banking.

Reuters

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