Statista

In partnership with the Financial Times, Statista identified Europe’s fastest-growing companies. The ninth annual list ranks the 1000 European companies with the highest revenue growth between 2020 and 2023. The first-place honor goes to Menlo from Poland , achieving an impressive CAGR of 830.8%. In second place is Alica from the UK, with a CAGR of 652.0%, followed by Almedia from Germany in third place, with a CAGR of 473.6%. More information can be found here: https://lnkd.in/dMcp6fY

Ukraine was the world’s biggest importer of arms between 2020 and 2024, with a global share of 8.8 percent, based on the size and value of the transfer rather than the purchasing price. This is according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), released Monday. It was followed by India (8.3 percent), Qatar (6.8 percent), Saudi Arabia (68 percent), Pakistan (4.6 percent) and Japan (3.9 percent). These five countries accounted for 35 percent of all arms imports over the latest five year average. Ukraine’s arms imports increased nearly 100 times between 2015-19 and 2020-2024, driven by the ongoing war following Russia’s invasion in February 2022. The U.S. was Ukraine’s main supplier, accounting for 45 percent of its imports, followed by Germany (12 percent) and Poland (11 percent). Ukraine has received transfers of major arms from at least 35 states since 2022. Russia, on the other hand, relies largely on its own industry for major arms, although in 2020-24 it received missiles with a range of 100 km and one-way attack drones from Iran as well as artillery and missiles from North Korea, according to the report. Regionally, Africa (-44 percent), Asia and Oceania (-21 percent) and the Middle East (-20 percent) all saw a decrease in imports of major arms from 2015-2019 to 2020-2024. Europe and the Americas had increases, at +155 percent and +13 percent, respectively. The decline in Asia and Oceania was mainly due to a decrease in Chinese arms imports (-64 percent). This meant China did not place in the top 10 global arms importers for the first time since 1990-94. According to the report, this shift speaks to how the country has increased domestic design and production capabilities, meaning it is less dependent on weapons imports. Meanwhile, Japan and South Korea have continued to expand their military capabilities amid ongoing tensions with China and North Korea. Even though Europe has seen the biggest proportional increase, Asia and Oceania continued to account for the highest share of arms imports of any world region in 2020-24 (33 percent). The region is home to four of the world’s top ten largest arms importers in the 2020-2024 period: India, Pakistan, Japan and Australia. It was followed by Europe (28 percent), the Middle East (27 percent), the Americas (6.2 percent) and Africa (4.5 percent).

While lower middle income countries have caught up majorly in terms of providing equal education opportunities for girls, low income countries continue to lag behind. As of 2021, only 38 percent of girls in poor, mainly African countries finished lower secondary school opposed to 43 percent of boys, a rate of just 0.89 females for every male. According to World Bank data, the gender education gap in low income countries and lower middle income countries like India, Vietnam, Nigeria, Kenya or Egypt was similar by the mid-1980s at a rate of around 0.65 females per male, but has since improved to hit gender parity in the early 2010s. For upper middle income countries, like most in Latin America as well as China, Indonesia, South Africa or Turkey, this happened as early as 2004. The World Bank reports that confounding factors of poverty and remote living as well as minority or disability status keep girls around the world from beginning or finishing their school education. This is despite the fact that girls outperform boys in many academic metrics, for example reading proficiency at the end of primary school or the likeliness of receiving a tertiary education. Globally, around 88-89 percent of children in the relevant age group finished primary school in 2023, with girls still very much overrepresented among those never schooled. Around 75 percent of children of both sexes finished lower secondary school that year globally. The gap was largest in Afghanistan, with the share of boys receiving an 8th grade education being more than 30 percentage points higher than that of girls.

In case you missed it💡 #icymi 🇺🇦 The U.S. Plays a Key Role in Military Aid to Ukraine 💉 How Vaccines Helped All But Eradicate Diseases 🇪🇺 ReArm Europe: The EU's €800-Billion Defense Plan 🚗 Tesla Is Falling Behind in the European EV Market ❗ The Sahel is the Global Epicenter for Terrorism

Terrorism remains a persistent threat in many countries around the world. While there were fewer terrorism-related deaths and attacks in 2024 than in the previous year, the number of countries that experienced at least one attack rose from 58 to 68. Meanwhile, as conditions improved in 34 countries overall in 2024, they deteriorated in 45 others - the highest number since 2018. This is according to the latest edition of the Global Terrorism Index, which measures the impact of terrorism around the world by tracking the number of incidents recorded each year. The index is published annually by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), a think-tank dedicated to promoting understanding of the economic, cultural and political factors that lead to peace. Data compiled by the IEP show that the Sahel remained the epicenter of terrorism in 2024, marking the second year in a row. The region accounted for nearly half of all terrorism-related deaths last year at 3,885, which is also a ten-fold increase since 2019. Niger was the country to see the biggest increase in terrorism deaths year-on-year, rising by 94 percent to a total of 930 people. While far less frequent and far less deadly, terrorist attacks have also surged in Western democracies, with the number of incidents in Europe having doubled in 2024 to a total of 67. The report states that lone actor terrorism is particularly on the rise in the West and that these acts are typically carried out by teenagers who have no formal ties to terrorist organizations but instead “become radicalized through online content, constructing personal ideologies that often blend conflicting viewpoints influenced via access to fringe forums, gaming environments, encrypted messaging apps and the dark web.”

Vaccines have been around for a long time and the first one is generally credited to Edward Jenner, an English doctor who injected pus from a cowpox pustule into an incision on an eight-year old's arm on May 14, 1796. The boy then proved immune to smallpox, one of the deadliest diseases at that time. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows just how effective vaccines have been in all but eradicating major diseases in the United States. Some diseases have in fact been eradicated with no new cases of polio or smallpox in decades in the United States compared to a 20th cenrury average of more than 10,000 cases per year. And even though progress in eradicating measles has stalled in recent years (due in part to growing vaccine skepticism), its morbidity is nowhere near the annual case load seen in the 20th century, when half a million people were infected in an average year. Its prevalence has fallen by more than 99 percent due to vaccinations, along with a whole host of other diseases such as pertussis (whooping cough), mumps and rubella.

The Trump administration's recent move to impose tariffs on Chinese, Mexican and Canadian goods as well as steel and aluminum imports in general is once again breaking with long-standing U.S. trade policy. Historically, the United States has favored low or no tariffs and the removal of barriers to trade. As of 2022, the U.S. had still applied a weighted average tariff rate of 1.5 percent on its imports according to the World Bank, placing it among the countries with the lowest tariffs worldwide together with European countries. This number might now be slightly higher and the same applies to China and Canada, which have issues retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. this week. In 2019, about halfway through the U.S.-China trade war, U.S. average applied tariff rate had already surged to 7 percent, data from Deutsche Bank suggested then. The World Bank's tariff rates refer to 2021-2022 data mostly and are weighted by product import shares without taking specific free trade deals into account. Although most developed countries have been pushing for lower trade barriers in order to foster competitiveness, tariffs continue to be very high in some parts of the world. India, for example, imposed weighted average tariffs of 11.5 percent in 2022 while in China, the rate was 3.1 percent. African countries have some of the highest rates with the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea standing at more than 18 percent. The Solomon Islands is the country with the highest weighted average tariff rate worldwide (20.7 percent).

Ahead of the European Council’s special summit on Thursday, where EU leaders will discuss the future of European defense and their continued support for Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, outlined a five-point plan to strengthen European defense and reduce the dependency on the United States. At the heart of the plan called ReArm Europe is a provision that would allow member states to increase defense spending significantly without triggering the Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP) outlined in the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact. The purpose of the pact outlined in 1997 was to ensure and enforce fiscal discipline within the EU, by requiring each member state to stay within certain limits of government debt (60 percent of GDP) and deficit (3 percent of GDP). By making an exemption for additional defense spending, the European Commission aims to create up to €650 billion in additional fiscal space over the next four years, assuming that member states increase their defense spending by 1.5 percent of GDP on average. Secondly the EU will provide €150 billion in loans to member states for defense investments, aiming to exercise a certain control over these investments and better coordinate them. This joint procurement approach is expected to reduce costs and fragmentation, increase interoperability and strengthen Europe’s defense industry. The other proposals in the Rearm Europe plan include using the EU budget to direct more funds towards defense investments for example by creating incentives for member states to do so. Finally, the European Commission’s proposal aims to mobilize private capital by accelerating the Savings and Investment Union and utilizing the European Investment Bank. In total, the package could mobilize up to €800 billion for “a safe and resilient Europe,” von der Leyen said, before concluding that “Europe is ready to step up.”

The UK’s Best Employers 2025 have been identified in an independent survey from a vast sample of 20,000 employees. Corporations employing at least 250 people are considered. Employees were asked to rate their own employers. They were also prompted to evaluate other employers in their respective industries. The 500 companies receiving the highest total scores are selected as UK's Best Employers. The Top Ten companies of the ranking are, from first to tenth, Cisco Systems, Legal & General, Home Instead, ByteDance, Direct Line Group, Saga plc., GMi, Mott MacDonald, Jacobs and Schroders. Three companies out of the Top ten belong to the Banking and Financial Services sector. More information can be found here: https://lnkd.in/e9_ykQPT

Observed on March 5th, the International Day for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Awareness seeks to raise global awareness of how disarmament efforts enhance peace and security, prevent armed conflicts, and reduce human suffering caused by weapons. Since the invention of nuclear weapons, numerous initiatives have aimed to promote global stability and security.While the number of warheads remains high, it has significantly decreased from Cold War levels. A major turning point was the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by the U.S. and USSR when both nations collectively held over 60,000 warheads.