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What do you do when an economy is struggling? If you’re a policymaker, a politician, or a central banker, you develop a stimulus package. That’s the term we examine in today’s episode. It’s the inside story of one of the biggest stimulus packages in history, to find out how it was set up, how it worked and what kind of results it got. The inside story of the European Fund for Strategic Investments.
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When we speak of the virtual world and storing things in ‘the cloud’, we seldom stop to realize that our digital climate impact is not virtual at all
Many people see digitalisation as this magical pixie dust that Tinker Bell sprinkles on old industries to make them all environmentally friendly. Stop printing newspapers and get your news online and suddenly your environmental footprint is down to zero, right?
Wrong.
In this episode of the Monster Under the Bed podcast we learn:
· What is the climate impact of the digital sector?
· What is Jevon’s paradox?
· What is the digital sector doing to clean up its act?
· That even when digital services use renewable energy, it might be using up renewable energy that otherwise might be used by more critical sources. So we should hold off on all those cat videos
· How can you personally curtail the CO2 emissions of our own use of technology?
My guests on this episode are the European Investment Bank’s head of division for digital infrastructure Harald Gruber and risk manager Shirley Rizk. They are but two of the many experts at the EU bank who are helping me challenge various rumours, myths, and misconceptions that we are trying to overturn on this series of podcasts.
Each episode features one ‘monster under the bed’ something that we are scared of, or mistakenly believe to be true. Check out our episodes on urbanisation, healthcare, education and much more.
Look up Monster Under the Bed on your phone’s podcast app, and click ‘Subscribe’ or ‘Follow’. This way you can sleep soundly without worrying about missing any episodes – and during the night Tinker Bell will sprinkle a new episodes into your phone for you!
Also, please rate and review us, and give us feedback – I’m @AllarTankler on Twitter.
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In schools and in the workplace disability training makes for better inclusion—and lets everyone draw on the strengths of people who overcame difficulties most of us never faced
Is disability a state of mind? According to Bebe Vio, the young Italian Paralympic champion, you don’t need arms and legs to reach your goals. However, disability and diversity can come in many different forms—they can even be invisible. How can you help create an inclusive society?
In this episode of the Monster Under the Bed podcast you’ll find out:
· What is social diversity, diversity in the workplace, and diversity benefits
· Why inclusion should start at school
· How culture and education can build equality
· Where jobs and disability come together
At the European Investment Bank, the EU bank, we care about diversity and inclusion. In this episode, we meet kids, men and women, with and without disabilities. All together they challenge our assumptions and prejudices.
In each episode of the Monster Under the Bed podcast, we fight one myth in society and win the battle for a more sensible way of doing things.
So that you don’t miss any episodes, subscribe to Monster Under the Bed on your phone’s podcast app. You can do it in iTunes, Acast and many other podcast platforms as well.
Let us know if you can think of a monster we should expose on future episodes. Get in touch on Twitter @AllarTankler. If you’ve got something to say about diversity and inclusion in particular, contact me @Anto4EIB
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In this episode of Monster Under the Bed, we bust the idea that the EU is something to scare people with, and the myth that it costs us too much
In the last few years, the EU budget has become a major topic of public discourse – whether in the media, or in our neighbourhood cafes. Something that once felt so remote has gone mainstream.
A lot of that is due to Brexit, and a lot of the conversations have had to do with specifically how much the European Union costs us, and our countries. So we decided to figure out whether there’s any truth in the often-heard exclamations that the EU costs us too much.
In this episode you’ll find out (without a lot of math or statistics):
· What is the EU budget? How is it decided, collected and spent? How big is it?
· How much does each European contribute to the EU budget?
· Why do some countries pay more into the EU budget than others do?
· What is cohesion?
· Why do people believe some of the myths about the EU floating around, and how can we use a moment of crisis and turn it into an opportunity?
At the European Investment Bank, the EU bank, we have all kinds of experts, who can challenge our assumptions, notions and prejudices about anything from climate to cybercrime and from healthcare to urbanisation. In this episode you will hear our Vice-President Alexander Stubb, as well as Mariusz Krukowski, the European Investment Bank’s senior policy adviser who works on EU budget issues and Brexit, among other things.
So that you don’t miss any episodes, subscribe to Monster Under the Bed on your phone’s podcast app. You can do it in iTunes, Acast and many other podcast platforms as well. In each episode of the podcast, we fight one imaginary monster under the bed and win the battle for a more sensible way of doing things.
Let us know if you can think of a monster we should expose on future episodes. Get in touch on Twitter @AllarTankler.
This episode contains audio content provided by the Audiovisual service of the European Commission (©European Union, 2013).
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In this episode of Monster Under the Bed, we bust the ‘you are what you know’ education myth and discover that, in fact, you are the things you know how to do
In the grim Victorian building where I went to school, we learned everything by rote. It worked out okay for me. But the focus at the school my kids attend doesn’t seem to be on cramming knowledge into their heads, and sometimes I wonder if that’s bad for them.
So I decided to examine the ideas I had about schooling. Maybe the things I thought made for good learning were actually education myths that no longer apply in the digital age. With the help of the education experts at the European Investment Bank, the EU bank, I decided to find out.
In this episode you’ll find out:
· What are competencies? Competencies are the things you know how to do, rather than the things you know (like public speaking or putting together a presentation)
· That kids are now focused on learning vs memorization, or to put it another way understanding vs memorizing. You could say it means learning life skills vs facts.
· that when you have to change career (and even sometimes when you don’t) you need upskilling. What is upskilling? Upskilling is often retraining to bring you skills and competencies in line with what employers need in a marketplace that’s increasingly digital
· that schools are preparing kids for the changes digitalisation is making to old ideas about careers
· how an EU programme makes education fairer and more socially inclusive.
At the European Investment Bank Group, the EU bank, we have all kinds of experts, just like the education specialists in this episode. They can challenge our assumptions, notions and prejudices about anything from climate to cybercrime and from healthcare to urbanisation.
We started the Monster Under the Bed podcast to examine these myths. In each episode of the podcast, we fight one imaginary monster under the bed and win the battle for a more sensible way of doing things.
So that you don’t miss any episodes, subscribe to Monster Under the Bed on your phone’s podcast app. You can do it in iTunes, Acast and many other podcast platforms as well.
Let us know if you can think of a monster we should expose on future episodes. Get in touch on Twitter @AllarTankler. If you’ve got something to say about education in particular, let me know @EIBMatt.
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Here’s why you should be even more scared of cybercrime and the rising cost of cybercrime prevention
You probably think that if you have the latest software on your computer and a strong IT department at work, you’re more or less safe from cyberattacks. Boy, are you wrong.
This myth is costing businesses a lot of money and causing people a lot of harm in lost data and privacy. You definitely should not rely only on software updates or the IT department to protect you from hackers. This episode of the Monster Under the Bed podcast lays out exactly what you need to do to stay as safe as possible.
In this episode you’ll find out:
· Why each one of us must take responsibility for cybersecurity
· Why an IT department can’t prevent hacking all the time
· Why cybercrime is getting worse and what are the projected losses. (One of our experts calls it “a shadow industry that is really spending time trying to defraud people.”)
· How adults and children can arm themselves for cyberattacks
· What a 10-year-old does when his computer is hacked
At the European Investment Bank, the EU bank, we have all kinds of experts, including the cybercrime specialists in this episode. They challenge our assumptions, notions and prejudices about anything from climate to cybercrime and from healthcare to urbanisation.
The Monster Under the Bed podcast examines these myths. In each episode, we fight one imaginary monster under the bed and win the battle for a more sensible way of doing things.
So that you don’t miss any episodes, subscribe to Monster Under the Bed on your phone’s podcast app. You can do it in iTunes, Acast and many other podcast platforms as well.
Let us know if you can think of a monster we should expose on future episodes. Get in touch on Twitter @AllarTankler. If you’ve got something to say about cybercrime in particular, let me know @EIBChris.
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Forget the dystopian images of overcrowded, polluting cities. When urban life is well-planned and well-managed it’s better for the environment than country living.
We all know the dystopian image of city life—smog, roads jammed with traffic, high prices and noise. Listen to this installment of our myth-busting show to find out:
· Where did cities come from? What were the instincts that first drove us to live close together? And are these reasons still valid today?
· Where did cities mess up? (Where did the dystopian image of cities as places with a low quality of life come from?)
· What is mixed planning and is it an entirely good thing? (No mixed reviews at all!)
· How country living is expensive for society and creates social isolation.
· Why urban sprawl is the real monster we should fear—not life in well-planned, well-managed, compact towns.
· And how deserting the countryside can actually be a boon for nature.
At the European Investment Bank, we have all kinds of experts who can challenge the assumptions, notions and prejudices we all have about anything from climate to cybercrime, and from healthcare to education.
On this episode, our guests are Brendan McDonagh from the European Investment Advisory Hub, a partnership between the EIB and the European Commission, EIB’s senior urban development specialist Grzegorz Gajda, and Stefanie Lindenberg, coordinator for the Natural Capital Finance Facility at the EIB – and some random people we approached in Luxembourg to find out how they feel about living in the city, or whether they’d rather be anywhere else.
All throughout the episodes we’ll be tackling those myths and fears to identify people and projects that are taking a more rational approach—which is good for our economy and our society.
Talking of rational, it makes sense to subscribe to Monster Under the Bed on your phone’s podcast app. This way you won’t miss any episodes. We’re also very grateful if you rate and review us – that helps others find the podcast. And you can suggest myths to bust and monsters to slay by tagging me on Twitter – I’m @AllarTankler.
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‘Monster Under the Bed’ is a new season of podcasts by the European Investment Bank that tackles myths and prejudices we all have about anything from health care to cybercrime, and from urban planning to education.
In this episode we talk about how advances in medicine and squeezed budgets are forcing countries to rethink health care.
For most of us, hospitals conjure up some very specific images: nurses and doctors running around, fancy machinery beeping away, somebody yelling “STAT!” While hospitals are chaotic places, they are also strangely reassuring. No matter how you are injured or what strange illness you’ve contracted, going to the nearby hospital can make you better. But maybe you don’t need a hospital after all. Did you know:
- Hospitals are an extremely expensive way to treat people
- Technology has made many surgeries less invasive, so that we don’t need to spend as much time in a hospital bed
- Patients in hospitals are often overtreated or required to stay longer than necessary
- Germany has a higher number of hospital beds than Spain, but the Spanish system is one of the world’s best
- People with chronic health issues are best treated outside of a hospital setting
- 20% of all health spending is wasted on ineffective care
Our guests are Tunde Szabo and Dana Burduja from the European Investment Bank’s Life Sciences division. They talk about how many countries actually need to close hospitals, or at least slim them down, to free up resources for other, more effective forms of care.
Subscribe and rate us! This way you won’t miss any episodes. And give us feedback via @AllarTankler or Twitter.
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Listen to our new podcast - Monster Under the Bed!
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A big part of finance (and life) is about trying to figure out what will happen in the future. Will the market go up? Will interest rates drop? Take a look into the future with an exclusive sneak peak at our new podcast Future Europe.
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Why do some companies decide not to sell shares on public exchanges? And who buys private equity? A Dictionary of Finance finds out. We also learn what "love money" is.
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From hospitals to schools and toll roads, project finance can be a valuable way to handle risk. Here’s how project finance works.
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How do banks track possible fraud? Take a look inside bank fraud investigations and forensic accounting.
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You don’t need a Ph.D to run bank risk models. But it helps. So A Dictionary of Finance got two superterrific scientists to explain. It’s important because bank risk models are central to the assessment of financial risk by banks.
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Find out how macroeconomics works with an overview of Adam Smith and the invisible hand, the Keynesian approach and the Chicago school. Macro (big) is the opposite of micro (small). So macroeconomics is the opposite of microfinance, right? Sorry, things are never that simple in banking. Listen to our episode on microfinance to see what that’s all about. And listen to this episode so you’ll know how macroeconomics works. In fact, you’ll see that, in a way, the main role of macroeconomics is to simplify economics. European Investment Bank economist Rozalia Pal explains that:
Macroeconomics deals with the economic performance of aggregated individual actors (companies, or people). In other words, what you do with your money is microeconomics. What the EU does with its money is macroeconomics.
We also learn about the history and the approaches behind various schools of thought in economic studies:
The classical school of thought, led by Adam Smith, famous for his ‘invisible hand’ metaphor. Smith posited that the invisible hand of the market creates the desired equilibrium.
Keynesian economics: During the Great Depression, Rozalia tells us, many economists came to see the invisible hand as failing to working (or at least failing to work fast enough). So the thinking of John Maynard Keynes rose to prominence. The British economist advocated the use of monetary (meaning, focused on interest rates) and fiscal (focused on government spending and taxation) interventions to stimulate the economy.
Neo-Keynesians: Following Keynes, Paul Samuelson and Franco Modigliani developed his ideas using mathematical models.
Chicago school economics, also called the neo-classical approach, opposed the Keynesian view mostly by showing that government interventions only impact the demand side of the economy. As the supply side is left intact, the effects are only short-term. Milton Friedman promoted what is known as a monetarist approach, proposing a small, but steady expansion of money supply.
Does this sound like a simplification? Well, that’s what macroeconomics tries to do, Rozalia tells us. To take lots of different inputs and create an overarching idea.
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The European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) hits a big target today. We mark the delivery of €315 billion in investment through this programme by turning A Dictionary of Finance into an EFSI podcast with Iliyana Tsanova, deputy managing director of EFSI. She lays out the reasoning behind the programme, which was created as part of Europe’s response to the global financial crisis. Administered by the European Investment Bank, EFSI consists of a guarantee from the EU budget and some billions of EIB capital. The aim: to support viable projects that were, nonetheless, failing to find market financing. The projects were, in fact, falling through the cracks of market gaps. (You’ll find out what a market gap is in the podcast too.) The original target set for the EIB was to invest in projects that would trigger €315 billion of investment after three years. That’s the landmark that has been reached today, and so we put out a special issue of the podcast to mark the occasion.
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If you want to know how mergers and acquisitions work, you’d best ask a lawyer. Because there are legions of them involved in any M&A deal (as mergers and acquisitions are known).
We hear from two lawyers with extensive experience in M&A, as well as other aspects of corporate law and equity financing, about exactly how mergers and acquisitions work.
Alexandra Slack, senior legal counsel at the European Investment Fund, and her European Investment Bank colleague Tom Nguyen take us through the story of M&A from the 1980s, when the field was so wild, hostile and controversial that it prompted a best-selling book called “Barbarians at the Gate,” through to more recent moves toward a less confrontational style of merger. On the way, Tom namechecks Gordon Gecko. Of course.
“From the legal perspective, a merger is when one company absorbs another and therefore becomes one entity,” says Alexandra. “In an acquisition, one company takes a majority stake in another and the two companies continue to exist.”
For fans of financial definitions (and this is A Dictionary of Finance, after all), Tom and Alexandra explain various terms, including:
Squeeze out, which allows an acquirer to buy the whole company, once a certain percentage of the shareholders accept its offer. This is a way of dealing with a dead register.
A dead register refers to shareholders who have changed address, for example, but haven’t informed the company, so they don’t respond to an offer to buy their shares by another company.
If there are terms or concepts you would like us to explore, give us a shout on Twitter (@EIBMatt or @AllarTankler). Or just send us a picture of you with your hair gelled like Gordon Gecko.
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Let’s face it, people don’t like bankers. But that’s because they don’t know about social finance. On this week’s episode of ‘A Dictionary of Finance’ we hear about social finance, which tackles social issues such as migration or the integration of prisoners into society. Listen, because it will make you feel warm and fuzzy. The episode also shows you how to get financing for your business through programmes backed by the European Investment Fund. If you think you might need a microfinance loan, go to 23:10 in the episode and hear Sam Clause, senior investment officer at the European Investment Fund for inclusive finance, explain how it works. At 27:20, Yvette Go, the EIF’s head of social and environmental impact investment, explains how you can get different types of equity financing for your social venture. As this is A Dictionary of Finance, we’ll also look at important terms, including ethical bank. An ethical bank is a place people might invest their money if they want to be sure the bank, in turn, invests in social enterprises. Sam tells you more about this at 30:20, explaining where to find details of an ethical bank in your country. If there are terms or concepts you would like us to explore, give us a shout on Twitter (@EIBMatt or @AllarTankler).
Subscribe to our podcast, rate us, and review us! You can do most of those things on any podcast platform you prefer, be it iTunes, Acast or Spotify.
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It took us 50-plus episodes of ‘A Dictionary of Finance’ podcast to realize we haven’t covered some of the very basics: terminology surrounding loans, our bread and butter.
So, Matt morphed into a sock-tycoon trying to get a loan from the European Investment Bank, with Allar acting as his not-so-knowledgeable lawyer. Explaining the loan terms are Garbiela Barufi, EIB loan officer for corporates in Iberia, and Martin Arnold, head of unit for corporate lending in the region. They help us come to terms with the following:
Tenor of a loan. Turns out it’s the same as maturity and refers to when the loan needs to be paid back.
Grace period. Typically immediately after the loan has been drawn down or disbursed, when the borrower does not need to make payments yet. It’s so the borrower can start making money on the investment first.
Availability period. When the loan is available for the borrower. This period can even be extended, usually for a fee.
We also cover secured and unsecured loans, senior and subordinated loans. We learn about floating and fixed interest rates, about EURIBOR, the disgraced LIBOR and SONIA (Sterling Overnight Index Average) which is relevant as the EIB has just issued a first bond linked to the SONIA benchmark.
We also learn about the pricing grid or pricing ratchet, in which the price of a loan is linked to a metric of the company’s performance, meaning that the cost of the loan can go up or down based on how the company is doing.
And then we discuss repayment profiles, such as balloon, bullet, sculpted etc. We’ll go over the differences of repayment schedules, meaning when do you have to repay how much, exactly. We also discuss which profiles might be more suitable for which kind of businesses.
The balloon, for example, doesn’t refer to either the borrower or the bank going bust, at all! Instead, it means the repayments are small in the beginning, and balloon towards the end.
And the bullet refers to the silver bullet, meaning it’s a loan that is the answer to all of your problems. No, just kidding, please consult a qualified expert before making any financial decisions, and remember, Matt and Allar are only (barely) qualified to be doing this podcast.
Remember to subscribe to this podcast and tell others! Simply look up ‘A Dictionary of Finance’ on iTunes, Acast or Spotify. Get in touch via Twitter with your feedback (@EIBMatt or @AllarTankler).
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Circular economy is an economic system which contrasts with the linear economy. In the linear economy, companies extract natural resources, make something out of them, pass the product on to consumers for use, only for the product eventually to be discarded. In the circular economy, producers and consumers avoid waste and extracting new natural resources. Instead, they reuse/repair products.
Circular economy takes the “line” in the linear economy, shortens it, and bends it into a circle. That’s how Liesbet Goovaerts, an engineer in advanced materials at the European Investment Bank (yes, we do have engineers working at the bank, and, yes, we do have an advanced materials division), elegantly explains it.
Liesbet is joined on this episode of ‘A Dictionary of Finance’ podcast by Arnold Verbeek, a senior advisor in the Innovation Finance Advisory division of the European Investment Bank.
The process they describe can also be called a closed loop.
Together they explain how virgin raw materials (these are materials, or natural capital) are extracted for the very first time, and why it’s better to reuse secondary raw materials, which are salvaged from an existing product. We also learn what cradle to cradle thinking is (bringing the product or its parts back to the cradle of its initial production). This is also sometimes called eco-design.
Turns out there is also a strong business case in the circular economy. Hedging yourself against price fluctuations of raw materials, for example.
When circular economy companies go to banks to seek financing, banks often overlook these aspects, and instead concentrate on the more novel features of the circular economy businesses. The fact that, for example, they may be producing more durable goods and thus have a lower turnover but a more devout client base. Or that instead of selling equipment they lease it, meaning revenue streams trickle in over time.
So what do you think circular economy experts would say when asked if they support the continuous re-use of economic textbooks from the 1970s in college classrooms today? They prefer them to be upgraded, instead. Find out why in the program!
If you do like a new podcast every now and then, however (we really do our best not to extract much of virgin raw materials into their production!), subscribe to A Dictionary of Finance! You can do so on Acast, Spotify, iTunes and everywhere else you get your podcasts.
Tell your friends and tell us (we’re friendly) what you think about it. We are @EIBMatt or @AllarTankler on Twitter.
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