Global Trade

This profile of Depfa/Hypo Real Estate is from CorpWatch's EuroZone Profiteers report - a study of the the role of six major banks in Greece, Ireland and Spain during the EuroZone crisis. Loans from these banks helped fuel the credit boom that left borrowing countries deep in debt. Read More

This profile of Commerzbank/Eurohypo is from CorpWatch's EuroZone Profiteers report which investigates the role of six major banks in Greece, Ireland and Spain during the EuroZone crisis. Loans from these banks helped fuel the credit boom that left the countries deep in debt. Read More

The EuroZone Profiteers: A CorpWatch Report. Profile of Eurohypo/Commerzbank which was given a €18 billion bailout in March 2012. Three months later it began winding down Eurohypo by selling off assets. Read More

Flower growers in Kenya have gone on strike to protest unpaid wages from Karuturi Global, the Indian flower export multinational. The strike is the latest in a series of problems that have caused the company share price to plummet from over Rs39 in 2008 to Rs0.63 in mid-September 2013. Read More

Executives at one of Ireland's biggest banks laughed and joked about how they were going to fool the Central Bank into bailing them out, according to a tape recording obtained by the Irish Independent. The failure of Anglo Irish Bank is eventually expected to cost the taxpayer €30 billion. Read More

H&M (Hennes & Mauritz), a major Swedish "fast fashion" retailer, led 30 international companies this week to commit to a new $3 billion fund to improve the safety of garment factories in Bangladesh. Watchdog organizations say the companies acted only because of external pressure by activists and workers. Read More

Multinationals like Benetton have tried to distance themselves from Rana Plaza, a Bangladeshi building housing five clothing factories, that collapsed last week killing over 400. Activists argue that change will only come when workers get more political support to challenge them. Read More

Jaffa oranges sold in European supermarkets labeled "Made in Israel" may have been grown and packaged in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, according to a report from the Boycott Divest Sanction (BDS) movement, an international coalition of Palestinian NGOs and activists. Read More

Morgan Stanley, a major U.S. investment bank, was well aware of the problems in the sub-prime mortgage market as far back as 2005, according to documents just released in a New York court under a lawsuit brought by the China Development Industrial Bank from Taiwan. Read More

A clandestine lobbying effort at the European Union (EU) by Swedish Match company to get legislators to lift a ban on a special kind of smokeless tobacco has forced the resignation of a top European bureaucrat and prompted renewed calls to strengthen rules on undue business influence in Brussels. Read More