France Financial News

Senior Russian leaders will meet on Monday for a hastily-arranged Security Council session, to discuss the country's response to a weekend bridge explosion in Crimea.  

While it is understandably the death in Russia's war in Ukraine that normally grabs headlines, today the plight of those living amid the bloodshed is being put under the spotlight.

Not only has the war in Ukraine cost lives, but Russia's invasion has also significantly damaged the environment, according to the Ukrainian Minister of Environmental Protection. 

The White House said on Sunday it would continue to arm Ukraine, while declining to comment on an explosion that damaged Russia's Crimea bridge.

Austria's current president Alexander Van der Bellen has secured a second six-year term in office.

Air France and aircraft maker Airbus will go on trial in Paris on Monday. 

Around 20 per cent of petrol stations in France were dealing with fuel shortages on Saturday, amid a ongoing strike in the country's energy sector.  

The winner, or winners, of this year's Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.

Homes and offices heated to a maximum of 19°C; no hot water in public buildings; no lit advertising overnight; a ban on doors left open in heated or air-conditioned shops; reduced temperatures in swimming pools and gyms: these are some examples of the action France is taking to save energy.

Paris Fashion Week 2022 consisted of 64 shows and 42 presentations, many of which demonstrated the future of fashion. From the sprayed-on dress worn by supermodel Bella Hadid at the Coperni show to upcycled fresh looks consisting of recycled garments, Paris Fashion Week brilliantly highlighted trends for upcoming seasons. 

More than 40 European leaders are gathering in Prague on Thursday for the inaugural meeting of the European Political Community.

As the majority of the world’s Central Banks are now developing or researching the prospects of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications has detailed how these individual CBDCs can co-exist in a global setting.

A month before the World Cup, several major French cities have decided to not organise fan zones showing games at football's biggest tournament. 

In this week’s newsletter, read about how Warner Music Group partnered with OpenSea to give artists a way to engage with their audiences. Find out how Tennis legend Maria Sharapova is exploring her growing interest in nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and check out how blockchain game Illuvium is trying to create an interoperable game. In other news, Meta enabled cross-posting for NFTs on Instagram and Facebook. And, don’t forget this week’s Nifty News featuring the Build-A-Bear Workshop entering Web3 and a CryptoPunk selling for 3,300 Ether (ETH) amid the bear market. 

On Wednesday, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, announced that it has successfully moved central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and tokenized assets on existing financial infrastructure through two separate experiments. According to SWIFT, the results demonstrated that "CBDCs can be rapidly deployed at scale to facilitate trade and investment between more than 200 countries and territories around the world."

This is the moment a Swedish MEP cut her hair in the European Parliament to show solidarity with anti-government protesters in Iran.

Tom Zschach, chief innovation officer at Swift says that the success showed that the blockchain networks could be interlinked for cross-border payments through a single gateway, and that Swift’s new transaction management capabilities could orchestrate all inter-network communication.“For CBDCs, our solution will enable central banks to connect their own networks simply and directly to all the other payments systems in the world through a single gateway, ensuring the instant and smooth flow of cross-border payments," he says.14 central and commercial banks, including Banque de France, the Deutsche Bundesbank, HSBC, Intesa Sanpaolo, NatWest, SMBC, Standard Chartered, UBS and Wells Fargo, are now collaborating in a testing environment to accelerate the path to full scale deployment.As reported by Finextra yesterday, a seperate Swift-led pilot has also successfully implemented a common framework linking tokenisation systems between CSD’s and global custodians. Working in collaboration with Citi, Clearstream, Northern Trust, and technology partner SETL, Swift explored 70 scenarios simulating market issuance and secondary market transfers of tokenised bonds, equities and cash.

Germany's former chancellor Angela Merkel has been hailed for her "great moral and political courage" in supporting asylum seekers.

Key developments to know about from Russia's war in Ukraine:

Global cryptocurrency exchange Binance has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Financial Monitoring Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan as a part of its global law enforcement training program.

Sanctions, censure and condemnation: Ukraine and its Western allies reacted decisively to Vladimir Putin's move to illegally annex four occupied regions of eastern Ukraine on Friday, amid a chorus of criticism from around the world.