The Abbott Government's tough negotiations in an effort to seal an Indian Free Trade Agreement (FTA) next year should see 70 per cent of Australia's two-way trade covered by a free trade agreement.

The South Australian Budget focus on tax cuts is a welcome move by the Weatherill Government to reduce costs to business and grow the economy.

PwC Australia has appointed David Smorgon OAM as the Executive Chairman of its Family, Business & Wealth practice in Private Clients.

Australia jumped five places to 15th in OECD rankings for employment of mature age workers.

Two young Australian innovators are ready to take their ventures to the next level after sharing in $20,000 in seed funding from PwC during a live pitching event held by the Foundation for Young Australians.

At PwC we have put significant effort into generating a national conversation about Australia's tax system and the need to improve it.

Australian small businesses can unlock an additional $49.2 billion in output over the next ten years by making better use of existing technology, PwC analysis commissioned by Google released today shows.

Cyber risk, political interference, and macro-economic volatility rank among the top sources of anxiety for Australian insurers, according to a joint PwC and Centre for Financial Innovation (CSFI) report released today.

A new PwC survey has found that 70 per cent of major Australian companies are planning to enter new joint ventures or strategic alliances to drive growth from the Chinese market.

The PwC network reported total global gross revenues of US$35.4 billion for the fiscal year ended on 30 June 2015.

Australia will need to nearly double its historic rate of decarbonisation, if it is to meet its goal of a 26 percent decrease in carbon emissions.

The economic impact of obesity will reach $87.7 billion and affect one-third of Australians by 2025 based on current trends and without further intervention.

Australia lags behind the world's best corporate performers in all ten indicators of digital intelligence needed to drive financial performance.

PwC partner and financial services leader Julie Coates said the Federal Government's response to the Financial System Inquiry Report was encouraging.

The number of detected cyber security incidents in Australia was the highest worldwide in the last 12 months with an increase of 109 percent, compared to a 38.5 percent increase globally.

With record low margins and stubborn expense to income ratios, the major banks must quickly seize the opportunity of the technology revolution or fail to keep pace with expectations.

Australian CEOs are less confident about domestic growth than their regional peers, and less certain of their ability to capture a return in Asia Pacific markets.

Violence against women and their children is costing Australia $21.7 billion each year, with Governments carrying more than a third of the cost burden; as shown in the report A high price to pay: the economic case for preventing violence against women.

Thirty-five of the ASX 200 companies saw a turnover in Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 2014, almost 35 percent more than the global average, including 8 unplanned succession events which cost $8 billion in foregone shareholder value

Australia is facing a growth problem, and the best way to spark growth is to create a bedrock for innovation and support businesses to disrupt themselves and take risks.

PwC has joined forces with leading not-for-profit food safety agency SSAFE to develop a new industry tool to help fight food fraud and protect consumers.

Australian CEOs are less confident about their companies' growth prospects than a year ago, and less optimistic about growth in the global economy, according to a PwC report released today.

Twenty tech entrepreneurs have been chosen for a new accelerator program run by PwC and backed by some of Australia's largest corporates that aims to rapidly scale Australia's most promising science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) education initiatives.

Chairman of the Board of Partners of PwC Australia, Michael Happell, has announced that Luke Sayers will continue as Chief Executive Officer of the Australian firm for a further four years.

PwC today announced it was collaborating with a range of Australasian startups and emerging technology companies to deliver a purpose-built cloud platform that brings together some of the leading cloud solutions in the market today, all in one place.

A standalone plebiscite with a compulsory vote on marriage equality could cost the Australian economy $525 million according to modelling released by PwC Australia today.

The overwhelming majority of global banks and traditional financial services firms believe part of their business is at risk of being lost to standalone Fintech challengers, according to a PwC report released today.

Australian oil and gas companies will need to think bigger and embrace customers in Asia, rapidly evolve their business models, and become much more responsive to emerging trends, if they are to thrive in a challenging new global marketplace.

Australia's next generation of family business leaders is more confident and better prepared for senior roles than two years ago, but is also experiencing more challenges, both inside the firm and in the wider business landscape.

PwC and NAB have teamed up to help self-employed and microbusiness customers operating in an emerging more flexible economy to manage their GST requirements.

Modest personal tax cuts, tighter superannuation concessions, and a pathway to lower corporate tax rates make this a responsible if not spectacular budget.

Australias four major banks delivered combined cash earnings of $14.9 billion for the first half to March 2016.

The emerging global market for business services using drone technology is valued at over US$127 billion with the drone revolution disrupting industries ranging from agriculture to filmmaking.

PwC Australia has recruited former CEO and Managing Director of David Jones Limited, Paul Zahra as Global Retail Advisor to add fuel to its growing retail and consumer practice.

The world's top 40 mining companies were in a race to the bottom in 2015, with falling market capitalisations and net losses leaving them slower, lower and weaker, according to PwC's Mine 2016 report released today.

Puppet, the Portland-based infrastructure automation company, today announced that it has named former Cloud Foundry Foundation executive director Abby Kearns as its new CTO. Current Puppet CTO Deepak Giridharagopal will remain in his role and focus on R&D and leading new projects, while Kearns will focus on expanding the company’s product portfolio and communicating with […]

The Cloud Foundry Foundation (CFF) just went through a major leadership change, with executive director Abby Kearns stepping down after five years (and becoming a CTO at Puppet) and the CFF’s CTO Chip Childers stepping into the top leadership role in the organization. For the most part, though, these changes are only accelerating some of […]

Microsoft has now opened registration for the virtual edition of its online-only Build 2020 developer conference, which will take place from May 19 to 20. Typically, the event draws more than 6,000 developers, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, that’s obviously not an option. In contrast to Google, which completely scrapped its I/O developer conference […]

Backblaze today announced that its B2 Cloud Storage service is now API-compatible with Amazon’s S3 storage service. Backblaze started as an affordable cloud backup service, but over the last few years, the company has also taken its storage expertise and launched the developer-centric B2 Cloud Storage service, which promises to be significantly cheaper than similar […]

At its Think Digital conference, IBM and Red Hat today announced a number of new services that all center around 5G edge and AI. The fact that the company is focusing on these two areas doesn’t come as a surprise, given that both edge and AI are two of the fastest-growing businesses in enterprise computing. […]

Mozilla today launched version 76 of its Firefox browser, and with that, it’s launching a couple of new features that you’ll likely notice if you’re already using the open-source browser. The highlight of today’s release is the enhanced password manager. Firefox Lockwise, as it is called these days, will now ask you for your device […]

Under different circumstances, GitHub would be hosting its Satellite conference in Paris this week. Like so many other events, GitHub decided to switch Satellite to a virtual event, but that isn’t stopping the Microsoft-owned company from announcing quite a bit of news this week. The highlight of GitHub’s announcement is surely the launch of GitHub […]

Google today announced that it is extending the preview period of Android 11 by about a month. So instead of launching a beta this month, as it had previously planned, it’ll release a fourth developer preview today instead. The first beta will officially launch on June 3, during an Android -centric online event it’ll hold […]

Hub Security, a Tel Aviv-based startup that developed a software and hardware platform for cryptographic operations, today announced that it has raised a $5 million Series A round led by AXA Ventures. Crowdfunding platform OurCrowd also participated in this round. Like most companies at the Series A stage, the company plans to use the investment […]

In the April 2020 update of its Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), released on April 7, and before a recently announced agreement by oil producing countries to limit production, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that U.S. crude oil production will average 11.8 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2020, a 4% decline from the 2019 production levels. Crude oil production will average 11.0 million b/d in 2021, a 6% decline from 2020 (Figure 1). If realized, the STEO 2020 production decline would mark the first annual decrease since 2016. The majority of the forecasted production decline occurs between the first and fourth quarters of 2020, dropping from 12.7 million b/d to 11 million b/d (13%) and remaining around that level through 2021. The forecast did not incorporate the April 12 joint announcement by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and several other non-OPEC countries to reduce crude oil production. These production reductions may significantly affect global balances and could provide upward price pressure that would affect U.S. crude oil drilling and production. ...

On Monday, April 20, 2020, New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil front-month futures prices fell below zero dollars per barrel (b)—at one point, trading at -$40.32/b (Figure 1)—and remained below zero for part of the following trading day. Monday marked the first time the price for the WTI futures contract fell below zero since trading began in 1983. Negative prices in commodity markets are very rare, but when they occur they typically indicate high transactions costs and significant infrastructure constraints. In this case, the WTI front-month futures contract was for May 2020 delivery, and the contract was set to expire on April 21, 2020. Unless they have made other arrangements ahead of time, market participants that hold WTI futures contracts to expiration must take physical delivery of WTI crude oil in Cushing, Oklahoma. Typically, most market participants close any futures contracts ahead of expiration through cash settlement in order to avoid taking physical delivery, and only about 1% of contracts are physically settled. The extreme market events of April 20 and April 21 were driven by several factors, including the inability of contract holders to find other market participants to sell the futures contracts. In addition, in this case, the scarcity of available crude oil storage meant several market participants sold their futures contracts at negative prices, in effect paying a counterparty to close out of the contracts. ...

Facebook is today rolling out a tool that will allow users in the U.S. and Canada to export their Facebook photos and videos to Google Photos. This data portability tool was first introduced in Ireland in December, and has since been made available to other international markets. To use the feature, Facebook users will need […]