Italy

Italy has been ranked the healthiest country on Earth in the Bloomberg Global Health Index of 163 countries. According to the study, the average life expectancy in the country is 80-89 years, while 2,800 miles south in Sierra Leone, the average newborn will die by 52.

The Bloomberg Global Health Index ranks Italy, Iceland, Switzerland, Singapore and Australia as the countries with the healthiest populations, in that order. The ranking takes into account metrics such as mortality, life expectancy, the number of people with elevated levels of blood pressure, blood glucose, and cholesterol, as well as the prevalence of obesity, alcoholism, and childhood malnutrition in the country.
Also on the top ten are Spain, Japan, Sweden, Israel, and Luxembourg. On the Bloomberg list, the U.S. landed in 34th place, with a health grade of 73.05 out of 100, compared to Italy’s grade of 93.11.

The Italian inland revenue service, L’Agenzia delle Entrate, on Wednesday applied a new flat tax aimed at attracting wealthy foreigners to Italy in a bid to compete with similar incentives offered in Britain and Spain, which have successfully attracted a slew of rich footballers and entertainers.

The new flat rate tax of €100,000 a year will apply to all worldwide income for foreigners who declare Italy to be their residency for tax purposes.
The measure, proposed in Italy’s 2017 budget, is expected to immediately draw in at least a thousand people, according to local media.

The number of cross-border workers commuting to Switzerland for jobs has risen by more than a quarter since 2011, the Swiss statistics office (BFS) said on Thursday.

At the end of 2016, 318,500 cross-border workers were active in Switzerland, an increase of 11,300 over the previous year. Lake Geneva (37.2%), northwest Switzerland (22.8%) and the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino (20.2%) remain top destinations for commuters from across the border. In the same five-year period the total number of working people in Switzerland (including residents and non-residents) rose by 7.8%, to 5.1 million.

Italy’s Luxottica and France’s Essilor on Monday announced they have agreed on a 50-billion-euro merger deal to create an eyewear giant with over 140,000 employees and sales in some 150 countries.

The deal, one of Europe’s largest cross-border tie-ups, brings together Luxottica, the world’s top spectacles maker with brands such as Oakley and Ray-Ban, with Essilor, the world’s leading manufacturer of ophthalmic lenses.
By merging, the companies would have jointly reported net earnings of over 15 billion euros, based on 2015 annual results posted by the two companies, and a net combined operating profit EBITDA of about 3.5 billion euros.

The European banks, which stocks are represented by the index Stoxx Europe 600 Banks, one of the 19 supersectors of the Stoxx family, had sharply underperformed the market until July 2016.

The course of the banking sector had reversed in August when the index started to climb and its weakness turned into strength. The most convincing signal at this matter occurred the last October, when it broke on the upside moving average at 200 days, just one month after the historical down-trending line has been interrupted. In just six months, 50% of the down-move 2015/2016 had been recovered, at the beginning of 2017 the index of the European Banks had risen 50% from the lows.

Ailing Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) needs to fill a larger capital gap than originally reported, the Italian bank stated late Monday citing new figures from the European Central Bank.

The amount needed to rescue the Europe’s oldest financial institution is €8.8 billion ($9.2 billion).

It previously reported that it needed to raise 5 billion euros (5.2 billion dollars) by the end of the month to make up for large-scale write downs on a mountain of bad loans. The request of €8.8 billion of fresh capital was decided on Thursday, December 22, in the last meeting of the ECB’s Supervisory Board.

The hidden treasure by Italian citizens in Swiss banks has yet to be discovered, according to the chief prosecutor of Milan, Francesco Greco, and liquidity would amount to 150 billion euro, deposited in safes, in denominations of 500 euro. This note is in fact banned because it is considered instrument of money laundering by the Bank of Italy.

A large part of the amount, which estimate is the result of cross-checks between MEF, FIU, Bank of Italy and the Guardia di Finanza, would be, according to Mr Greco, mostly in Ticino.

Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s biggest retail bank, will pay $235 million to New York’s financial regulator for anti-money laundering failures and violations of bank secrecy laws.
The big Italian bank failed to flag questionable transactions and deviated from policies designed to root out wrongdoing, which "seriously (compromised) the security of the international financial system," said Maria Vullo, superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services.