“Innovation” can sometimes feel like an overused buzzword favored by the likes of startups. But more and more, multinational companies are infusing their organizations with teams focused on looking ahead  to solve the biggest problems facing their industries. But how do companies with offices around the  world and a workforce that numbers in tens of thousands take a nimble approach and embrace a startup mindset?

To celebrate Earth Day 2022, Citi colleagues Keith Tuffley, Co-Head of Sustainability & Corporate Transitions, and Victoria Monreal Vela, Sustainability & Corporate Transitions Analyst, spoke with Robert Swan, Record Breaking Polar Explorer and Environmental Campaigner. As the first person to walk both the North and South Poles, Robert has been traveling to Antarctica for over 30 years and has seen huge changes over this time period, including seeing it rain for the first time in the Antarctic. Listen here as Keith and Victoria discuss with Robert the role that Citi plays in helping to address climate change and the journey to net zero.

Innovation is everywhere. As such, it can be challenging to know how to measure one innovation with another. How do you compare the size of opportunity across a range of innovations? A new report by Adam Spielman from Citi Global Insights, offers a novel way to help sift through innovations, offering an invaluable framework for comparison.

Demonstrating and championing the economic case for gender equality in the global workplace has been a consistent feature of the Citi GPS series over many years. In this new report, we have turned our attention to advocating the business case for supporting women entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses. As the world seeks to build back from the pandemic, transition to a low carbon economy, and achieve the potential of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we believe that building a gender-balanced playing field for entrepreneurs is critical. Supporting women entrepreneurs and women-led businesses is not just the right thing to do socially, it is one of the smartest things that governments, corporations, and the finance community could do economically.

The already massive global gaming market continues to expand in part due to COVID-19 with increased engagement, and a shift toward content creation via streaming and direct viewer interaction. This trend is driving greater mainstream visibility and a resurgence in gaming popularity. According to a report, the global gaming market generated approximately 178 billion U.S. dollars in revenues in 2020, which translates to 23.1 percent growth compared to 2019.

In a new note, Citi Research’s Giada Giani argues that wage growth in the Eurozone is likely to pick up substantially over the next couple of years, almost irrespective of the true tightness of the labour market. The acceleration could be enough to give a hawkish-leaning ECB an excuse to start hiking interest rates.

The recent flow of funds into ESG0-type financial products has prompted investors beyond the impact investing space to consider impact and try and understand its boundaries. Impact investing goes beyond ESG investing as the investment must not only target impactful activities, but also be impactful in and of itself. This sounds simple, but there is a big debate on how to measure impact as well as the ways in which an investment can be impactful.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a catalyst for rapid change in the art market. With galleries forced to close their doors, international art fairs postponed, and major auctions delayed, the art world quickly needed to adapt. In our 2020 Citi GPS report The Global Art Market and COVID-19, we highlighted how the industry was adept in shifting to the digital world, with leading auction houses conducting virtual auctions, and art fairs going online and creating new kinds of experiences for attendees. Coming from behind the curve on digital, this belated shift increased transparency in pricing and attracted Millennials who were more comfortable buying art online.

Citi’s senior leadership team outlined the firm’s strategy, progress over the last year and path forward

The first of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) is to end poverty. While one of the benefits of globalization over the past 30 years has been the reduction in absolute rates of poverty worldwide, poverty is often still simply measured in terms of income levels. Yet poverty is multifaceted and reflects more than a deficiency of income and productive resources. It encompasses economic, social, cultural, and political elements and is inherently interwoven with a lack of fundamental human rights. According to the UN, its manifestations include hunger and malnutrition, inequality, social discrimination and exclusion, deprivation, inadequate access to education and basic services, as well as lack of participation in decision-making. To make progress towards poverty reduction, we need to consider ways to mobilize more investors and businesses to adopt this goal.

In a deep-dive report, Citi Research’s US Leisure analyst, James Hardiman, looks at some of the big themes shaping the leisure industry as it emerges into a post-pandemic world.

It feels that the pandemic has made changes to just about everything in daily life. Not only have our routines changed, but we have also been put on a steep learning curve of new concepts. First, there was a need to get up to speed on disease prevention (e.g., transmission rates, viral loads, and how mRNA vaccines worked) as well as hospital capacity. As we shifted from commuting to offices and schools to working and learning remotely, we needed to get up to speed on home technology and remote applications. Lockdowns and quarantine orders meant the hunt for basic goods such as toilet paper and cleaning supplies became challenging, and suddenly economics and supply chain disruptions became part of our daily news feed.