PwC's Short Reads - July Edition
1. Could the Transfer Pricing Rules have an impact on VAT?
In the normal course of business, the objective of selling goods and services is to maximise corporate profits, while remaining competitive in the market.?Having said that, when goods and services are transacted between related parties within a group, the intention may shift from maximising profits to minimising the group’s global tax burden. Therefore, prices charged between related parties may not be at arm’s length.
2. Innovation in learning through education technology
The Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST), supported through its Applied Research and Innovation Centre, has been working non-stop to build an innovative educational ecosystem and keep abreast with cutting-edge educational technology (EdTech) advancements.?One of MCAST’s 20 smart targets by 2027 is “to promote digitalisation as a core interactive function across MCAST” and to “set up, through EdTech, an Innovation & Visualisation Infrastructure that will be used to coordinate the dissemination of advanced educational technologies” to enhance teaching & learning experiences.
3. Effective marketing through storytelling - What's your Brand story?
Cave walls marked by hunters and a herd of mammoths, while sabre-toothed predators are an ever-looming danger in the background. Babylonian cuneiform tablets speaking of Gilgamesh and his tale, the world’s first legend. The Greeks and Romans painted our night sky with countless characters in the form of constellations. Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, and his fabled Journey to the West. The human psyche is wired in a way that it can’t help but to latch onto a good story, and this is something marketers use to help push advertising and their brand.
4. Next in insurance 2023
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The stability that insurers have long relied on for predictable risk pricing and consistent growth is disappearing. There’s been a succession of short-term crises so far this century and these are part of longer-term trends. In the recent past, we referred to five factors that profoundly affect the insurance industry: social, technological, economic, environmental, and political, known as STEEP. Their impact is only increasing.
5. The new sustainability mandate
Companies are facing increasing pressure to act on sustainability issues and many organisations are now committing to set ambitious environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives. Even locally, the number of companies gearing up for CSRD and reporting on their material ESG metrics is increasing. However, in reality, little is being achieved on environmental issues, leading to a gap between intentions and reality.
6. Geopolitics makes cyber security an ongoing issue for CEOs
Cyber security remains one of the key levers that CEOs can draw on to protect their organisation from evolving risk. 48 % of CEOs say they are increasing investment in cyber security or data privacy in response to rising geopolitical conflict. After a turbulent 12 months, it is no surprise that global CEOs identify inflation (40 %), macroeconomic volatility (31 %) and geopolitical conflict (25 %) as their top three risks for the year ahead. Cyber is fourth (20 %) and it's the top operational risk, remaining firmly on board agendas. The geopolitical environment and rapid digitisation continue to focus CEO attention on cyber risk. German CEOs rate cyber risks even higher than their international peer group (29 % to 20 %).