Leaders from the G7 countries concluded their annual three-day summit yesterday. A storyline involving France, the U.S., digital taxation and wine tariffs illuminates some of the most important economic issues of our time.
Despite opposition from business quarters and serious glitches during testing, France is moving ahead with a plan that will require employers to withhold income tax from employee paychecks starting in January 2019.
The French government has announced reforms to make the country’s labor system more employer-friendly. The reforms will ease the process of hiring and firing employees and should lower unemployment and induce foreign investment.
This month’s transfer of Brazilian soccer player Neymar from the Spanish super club Barcelona to the French super club Paris St-Germain included a transfer fee of over $250 million, putting it on a par with some of the year’s biggest cross-border M&A deals. The transaction speaks to the changing nature of global super clubs and to the global economy itself.
For the first time since 1958, France has elected a president with ties to neither of the country’s two main political parties. Here’s a brief look at the economic conditions Emmanuel Macron faces and his employment agenda.
London is home to some 200,000 French expats and is sometimes facetiously called France’s sixth largest city. Brexit-related uncertainties have some London-based French expats worried, while French authorities see an opportunity to woo them back home.
France will hold its presidential election on April 23. By most accounts, the election has the potential to cause significant global upheaval.
This week's Global Glance looks at smoking in France and the global legislative trend that strips tobacco companies of branding privileges while forcing them to include disturbing images on their packaging.
After years of negotiation, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive new trade agreement, was signed in February this year by 12 nations. If it is ratified — a big “if” — it will bring important economic benefits to member nations, which include the US, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru — but not China. At first glance, it may seem surprising that the world’s second-largest economy isn’t participating. But if you take a deeper look at the pact and its requirements, the reasons become clear. They also shed light on China’s ambitions and the other initiatives it is pursuing to support them, even as the future of the TPP itself becomes increasingly cloudy.
Recruiting, developing and retaining talent are fundamental to the success of any business. And in today’s global economy, where businesses often find they must expand globally to compete, you may have to attract and hire talent in an unfamiliar country. As global HR veterans know, recruiting employees abroad is even more challenging than recruiting at home, largely because related laws and customs vary considerably by country. Before you recruit local nationals (i.e., citizens of the host country) you will need to devise a recruiting strategy that accounts for the laws, culture and market practices of your target countries. This post focuses on some important areas you should consider when developing such a strategy, both to stay on the right side of local laws and to attract top talent.
France can be perceived stereotypically abroad as a country where strikes happened too regularly, workers do not work many hours, businesses are burdened with taxation, trade unions remain all-powerful, free enterprise is a pipe dream and employers must comply with cumbersome red tape. And there are varying degrees of truth to all of these perceptions. For these reasons and others, multinationals are understandably wary of expanding into the French market.
Bloomberg reports that Apple has offered Tesla employees “$250,000 signing bonuses and 60 percent salary increases.” And it must be noted that this employee pilfering — and the attendant transfer of trade secrets and other valuable information — has in this case been a two-way street. Employee poaching between US-based blue chip rivals like Apple and Tesla grabs the headlines, but it’s a scenario that’s being played out at all levels of industry and in virtually all countries. For smaller firms, the double whammy of a loss of talent and a leak of intellectual property can be disastrous. In the face of this trend, employers of all sizes increasingly want to prevent defection through a tightly worded employment contract.