Could our uncertainties about the future for Europe have been given a more devastating focus than the attacks on Brussels last month and on Paris before that last November? The atrocities will surely only deepen the fissures and doubts. Can we continue to stick with Angela Merkel’s welcoming ethos towards refugees? Does doing so fundamentally jeopardise our collective security? And if we abandon that policy of keeping borders open, what, in any case, would reversing the rules look like? Schengen is in tatters and nationalism is on the rise – localised pockets of nationalism, perhaps, but nevertheless, they are there. Another open question is whether the bombings in Brussels make a vote in the UK to leave the EU more likely. The question ‘do UK citizens collectively want to leave the European Union?’ was not framed with these security issues front and centre – not at all. And for businesses and treasurers, the question remains one of the practicalities of how we arrange our socioeconomic and political combined interests within Europe. As Colin Tyler points out, on page 19, a no vote would still commit the UK to the financial regulation that has been in place since 2008, and bilateral trade and administrative agreements will remain a necessity. Quite simply, corporates will always need sound and solid trade accords and agreements to operate across borders. But the attacks in Brussels and Paris are attacks on European unity. How realistic is it that, in the minds of UK voters, those issues will remain separate? We look closely at business decision-making in our lead feature. Management has always been a blend of weighing data and evidence against the intangibles of experience, and even instinct. Setting up new operations and operating across borders sets distinctive challenges on that front. Management journalist and writer Simon Caulkin explores the data versus instinct debate on page 24 and we look, too, at how treasurers weigh those decisions in relation to operating in emerging markets. Staying with our emerging-markets theme, Semih Ozkan explores the south-south corridor – the relationship between Africa, Asia and the Middle East, on page 30, and we also look at the rising importance of panda bonds to investors as the barriers around China’s financial machinery loosen, on page 36. I hope you enjoy the issue.
