Bonus Blockage
The water regulator Ofwat has shown its (much questioned) muscle and banned six companies from paying bonuses as it cracks down on sewage pollution.
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Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
UK sanctions crypto exchange tied to Russian ruble stablecoin
The UK sanctioned a Kyrgyzstan-based bank and crypto exchange on Wednesday, citing their support for A7A5, a stablecoin backed by the Russian ruble. A7A5 has been used to evade sanctions that the US and UK imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022, according to crypto forensics firms TRM Labs and Elliptic. 'If the Kremlin thinks they can hide their desperate attempts to soften the blow of our sanctions by laundering transactions through dodgy crypto networks — they are sorely mistaken,' UK Sanctions Minister Stephen Doughty said in a statement. 'These sanctions keep up the pressure on Putin at a critical time and crack down on the illicit networks being used to funnel money into his war chest.' The UK sanctioned Capital Bank, a Kyrgyzstan-based bank, and cryptocurrency exchange Grinex, which crypto tracing firm TRM Labs has described as a 'successor platform' to Garantex, a previously-sanctioned Russian exchange. It also sanctioned Meer, a centralised crypto exchange registered on December 9, 2024 — the same day that Grinex and A7A5 were established, according to TRM. The ruble-pegged A7A5 is issued by Kyrgyzstani company Old Vector and designed to facilitate the recovery of assets belonging to Garantex customers, according to TRM. About $26 million in Tether's stablecoin USDT on Garantex was frozen after officials in the US, Germany, and Finland seized the exchange's primary domain in March. (UK officials did not accuse Tether of aiding in Russian sanctions evasion in their Wednesday notice. But US authorities opened an investigation into the company last year for possible violations of sanctions and anti-money laundering rules, according to a Wall Street Journal report. CEO Paolo Ardoino accused the newspaper of 'regurgitating old noise.') 'Former Garantex customers were credited with A7A5 in amounts equivalent to their frozen balances, which could then be traded or redeemed on [Grinex],' TRM wrote in its August 4 report. In late June, crypto forensics firm Elliptic said over $1 billion was being transferred through A7A5 daily, with the aggregate value of the stablecoin's transfers topping $41 billion. A7A5 is a yield-bearing stablecoin, paying holders 50% of the interest earned on the bank deposits that back it, according to its documentation. It is available on Ethereum and TRON. 'We are creating not just a ruble stablecoin, but a tool that gives the market the opportunity to safely enter the ruble and USDT, as well as an alternative to USDT that is not subject to sanctions risks,' the team behind A7A5 has said, according to Elliptic, which did not provide a source for the quote. The stablecoin's developers did not immediately respond to DL News' request for comment submitted through the A7A5 website on Wednesday. Its X account did not appear to address Wednesday's sanctions. 'A7A5 is a fully regulated token that has been issued in accordance with Kyrgyzstan's new legislation, providing an unparalleled level of trust and security for investors,' its website states. In addition to Grinex and Meer, it is also available on sanctioned peer-to-peer exchange Bitpapa; Ethereum-based decentralised exchanges Uniswap and Curve; and a purpose-built DEX dubbed A7A5 DEX. As of late June, the stablecoin had seen $8.5 billion in exchange volume, a figure that does not include volume on peer-to-peer exchanges or over-the-counter brokers. Of that volume, 61% was used to move in and out of rubles; the remainder was used to move in and out of USDT. Last week, the US sanctioned Garantex Europe OU, Grinex, and six associated companies. Last year, Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov said the country was using Bitcoin and digital currencies with international trade partners in an effort to counter Western sanctions. Russia's experimentation with cryptocurrency follows years of limits on its financial activities abroad. In 2014, the US and other European countries imposed sanctions on Russian companies and individuals after President Vladimir Putin ordered the annexation of Crimea, a region of Ukraine. In 2022, the US and other countries increased Russian sanctions after Putin's broader invasion of Ukraine. Aleks Gilbert is DL News' New York-based DeFi correspondent. Got a tip? Email at aleks@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
UK Inflation Shocker: Why the BOE's Rate Cuts May Be Off the Table
This article first appeared on GuruFocus. While inflation has cooled across much of the developed world, the UK is proving stubborn. Consumer prices jumped 3.8% year-on-year in July and are expected to breach 4% by Septemberdouble the Bank of England's 2% target. The BOE has already slashed interest rates five times, trimming them to 4% from last year's 5.25% peak. But that hasn't been enough to rein in prices. Core drivers? Surging energy bills, labor costs, and a 26 billion payroll tax rolled out in Aprilall of which are pushing up input costs for businesses, many of whom are passing them on. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 5 Warning Signs with NVDA. Underneath the surface, the structural headwinds look even more problematic. UK productivity shrank 1% in Q2 compared to last year, putting the country behind most of its G7 peers. Add in lingering Brexit-related trade frictions and food prices that are now nearly 40% higher than pre-pandemic levels, and it becomes harder to argue this is just a cyclical inflation blip. Some pressures, like the summer airfare spike, may prove temporarybut the BOE remains on edge about second-round effects as workers continue to seek higher pay to shield themselves from the cost-of-living squeeze. Markets still expect a cut to 3.75% in November, but the BOE may hold back if wage growth doesn't cool as expected. For investors, this means uncertainty lingersparticularly for UK-linked consumer names and housing-sensitive sectors. Even global players like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), which has exposure to the UK market, could feel ripple effects if inflation stays sticky and rate cuts get delayed. The BOE isn't calling the peak yetand neither should the market.
Forbes
31 minutes ago
- Forbes
The AI Tipping Point Is Coming From Corporate Power Users
For all the excitement about the power of AI to transform businesses, many large companies are struggling when it comes to getting their company-wide AI initiatives off first base. According to recent research, AI project failure rates are on the rise, with 46% of AI proof-of-concepts being scrapped before they reach production. The reasons for these failures can vary widely, but a common thread in most of them is a lack of integration into routine workflows. Standalone AI products may work well in a vacuum, but when it comes to truly transforming business, they can be difficult to plug into existing systems and legacy processes. There are some exceptions, however, where AI is already revolutionizing the way professionals work and setting the tone for how big corporations integrate AI. And it's not the places you'd expect. Some of the most breakthrough real-world use cases for AI right now are coming from the corporate legal, tax and accounting, compliance, global trade, human resources other departments that handle complex, data-heavy information processing workloads. While these corporate enabling functions may be more commonly associated with risk aversion than cutting-edge technology adoption, the fact that they are leading the way on AI should not come as a total surprise. First, there is the current business environment, which I described in a recent article as the 'age of uncertainty.' This is an extraordinarily challenging time to be working in the legal, tax, compliance, or global trade function of a large corporation. From tariffs to tax policy to regulatory reform, the level of volatility affecting so many different aspects of business operations is truly staggering. Meanwhile, talent is scarce. Among corporate legal departments, 62% of current employees say they do not feel like they have enough time to do everything they would like to do – despite working an average of 49 hours per week. The situation in the tax department is even worse, with three quarters of certified public accountants set to retire in the next decade and fewer students than ever are pursuing accounting degrees. The result is more complex, higher-stakes work with fewer resources and a recipe for career burnout. Then, there is the subject matter. The most successful professionals operating in this world of corporate enabling functions are masters at unearthing information—connecting the dots between seemingly disparate events and concepts and finding relationships and risks that matter to the business. This also happens to be an area where AI can be extraordinarily effective. It is no accident that some of the first, high-profile proof points for generative AI were passing the LSAT, bar exam and CPA exam. Large language models are incredibly effective when it comes to anomaly detection and parsing reams of unstructured data to surface the missing link. And, when those models are grounded in authoritative case law and tax policy information that's been curated and vetted by attorneys and CPAs, the accuracy and consistency of results is unmatched. Those strengths have not been lost on corporate legal and tax teams, and other enabling functions inside large corporations who increasingly see AI as a strategic advantage. According to Thomson Reuters' recent Future of Professionals Report 2025, 81% of professionals believe that AI will have a high or transformational impact on their profession within the next five years, and 54% are already experiencing one type of benefit from AI adoption. But the biggest wild card that's helping these corporate enabling functions become the spearheads of enterprise-wide AI adoption is workflow integration. The real reason why corporate counsel and tax departments are proving to be such successful AI use cases is that the solutions developed for these functions are transforming complete, end-to-end processes. It's not a case where the legal team, for example, is accessing a standalone AI widget that helps research case law or draft documents. They are embedding AI across the entire workflow from legal research to document analysis to drafting in a seamless, connected manner. From an end-user perspective, that means AI is becoming less of a novelty that is used for isolated tasks and more of a built-in feature that is embedded at every step in the process. That was always the promise of AI – to transform complex, data- and information-intensive workflows by augmenting human expertise with powerful analytics and processing capabilities. It's taken a bunch of lawyers, accountants, compliance professionals and others who have not historically been considered the hubs of technological innovation to make that promise a reality. Ultimately, by following some of the lessons learned implementing large-scale AI initiatives in these key enabling functions, business leaders will start to develop the roadmap for enterprise AI transformation.
