1. Amazon “buys” Cyprus
2021 sees Amazon and other online monopoly and infotech giants casting an increasingly wary eye on governments looking to take them down a notch for having become too powerful, and for paying very low tax rates.
These companies have long employed an army of lobbyists, with some of them even taking up quasi-governmental approaches to the situation. Take Microsoft, which has launched a United Nations representation office in New York and hired a diplomat to run European government affairs. At the same time, Facebook has even established a “Supreme Court” to oversee user complaints and other issues.
In 2021, as the heat from official quarters rises, Amazon makes its move, redomiciling its EU headquarters to Cyprus. The country welcomes the giant corporation and the tax revenue that will help it reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio of nearly 100 percent. Amazon consultants “help” Cyprus to rewrite its tax code to mimic Ireland’s, but with even lower level
Top 10 outrageous predictions for 2021 according to Saxo Bank
December 17, 2020
What the outrageous predictions – and what actually happened in 2020 – teach us as investors is that it pays to remain flexible.
46SHARES
If there is one thing that a tumultuous 2020 taught us, it is that no prediction is too outrageous to actually happen.
Anyone who had predicted the rash of lockdowns, pandemic death tolls, massive stimulus payments, plunging interest rates, stalled international travel and epidemiologists who became household names would quite possibly have been seen as plumb crazy.
But it all came to pass and plenty more as the COVID-19 virus picked its own set of economic winners and losers as some countries performed much better in fighting the virus than others.
Every year, Saxo Bank, the Danish investment bank, comes out with its list of the 10 most outrageous events that might affect global finance in the coming year. The outlier events that are out of the norm and might make the unexpected happen, is what the financial organization indulges in annually.
“Some of our forecasts might come to pass, some might not – but they’re all guaranteed to give you a new perspective on the markets and make you think outside the box,” is how the bank describes its annual exercise.
Of course, no one can ignore the pandemic effect, which has seen online businesses and e-commerce, and AI all taking center stage along with the greater focus on green.