According to Natasha Hamilton-Hart, Professor in the Department of Management and International Business at the University of Auckland Business School, rules may turn detrimental when they hinder one’s ability to perform effectively. Even though they are supposed to regulate power and provide control, rules do not always lead to people being accountable for their actions. Therefore, Natasha claims that the solution is to have more authority within the organisation, which enables individuals to make decisions, and delete those rules that are unnecessary. Too many rules are an issue in many organisations as they prevent them from making progress and hamper leaders’ actions. With no authority, it is even harder for leaders to work with people and evaluate their performance.

Professor Natasha Hamilton-Hart has extensively published on governance systems in Southeast Asia, focusing on state institutions and property rights. Her current research explores the relationship between the economics-security nexus in East Asia, as well as the role of hierarchy, which she wrote about extensively in her recently released book ’Stupid Rules: Reducing Red Tape and Making Organisations More Effective and Accountable’ (Agenda Publishing). Natasha earned her PhD from Cornell University and has previously held positions at the Australian National University and the National University of Singapore.

In an exclusive interview with International Finance, Professor Natasha Hamilton-Hart discusses the negative impact of too many rules on organisational effectiveness, claiming that accountability is better achieved through proper delegation of authority. She stresses how rules-based organisations tend to discourage decision-making, inhibit leadership, and impede progress, accentuating the importance of hierarchical empowerment, which allows people to make decisions and remove bureaucratic barriers.

In your book ’Stupid Rules: Reducing Red Tape and Making Organisations More Effective and Accountable’, you argue that some rules reduce productivity. What led you to question rule-heavy systems in the first place?

I returned to New Zealand after many years working in Singapore, and found processes surprisingly cumbersome. I had far less control over several aspects of my work, and the rule book was much longer. I then noticed that much of the country seemed to be ’stuck’, unable to deliver public infrastructure efficiently, bogged down in litigation, and many people were fearful of action in case they broke the rules.

In what ways does authority make people more responsible for their decisions?

It is perhaps paradoxical, but if someone has clearly defined authority, meaning they can make decisions based on discretionary judgement, then they can be held to account for those decisions. In contrast, if a manager is reduced to only following and enforcing rules, he or she is not really accountable when things go wrong despite rule-following.

Organisations often introduce new rules after mistakes occur. Why does this response fail to address the underlying issue?

In some cases, a new rule may fix the problem, if the situation really does call for a non-discretionary rule. We can consider a few examples where this might apply, such as speed limits for driving or the requirement to file expense claims within a certain number of days. But often, the problem is a ’mistake’ that is unlikely to be fixed with a simple rule. That could be because the person who made the ’mistake’ has bad judgement, or is a bully, or something like that. In that scenario, a longer, more detailed rule book on its own won’t fix the problem. It just means everyone, including high-functioning personnel, is tied down by red tape, and you still have the incompetent or abusive person to deal with. In other situations, it may be that sometimes mistakes are inevitable, and it does not necessarily signal that the person is incompetent. There are simply situations where the correct decision is not obvious. It is a classic insight originally put forward by Frank Knight, that management in a hierarchy is there to make decisions under uncertainty. Sometimes, the decision may turn out to be the wrong one. It is up to the organisation’s more senior levels to figure out whether the manager is not up to the job, or whether the decision was in fact a reasonable one in the circumstances.

Having studied governance systems in Southeast Asia for more than two decades, how did that research shape your views on authority and bureaucracy?

Southeast Asia showcases a huge variety of bureaucratic systems, both in government and business. Some systems are very informal in practice, meaning that a person’s actual authority may not correspond to their position on the organisation’s chart. Other systems can deliver in a purposeful and disciplined manner. What I noticed was that these more purposeful organisations were not actually rule-bound: decision-makers had quite wide latitude to make choices. But they were still constrained to pursue organisational purpose (rather than their own whims or private interests) by the hierarchy above them.

Some people worry that giving more authority could lead to abuse of power, so how can organisations balance authority with democratic accountability?

Accountability mechanisms are definitely important. But not every organisation needs to be a democracy. Inside the organisation, the primary accountability mechanism should be a well-functioning hierarchy, with oversight and understanding systems that hold managers responsible for detecting and dealing with bad behaviour, such as fraud or harassment. But then, organisations themselves need to be held accountable to ensure their purpose is aligned with what society accepts. My view is that this alignment is best ensured by democratic mechanisms for making and enforcing laws, which may include delegating authority to regulatory agencies or the police, but which ultimately places the decisions about what is or is not acceptable in the hands of the voting public. But other mechanisms might serve the same functions. In some theories, the threat of war or rebellion creates incentives for good government. But this obviously does not always work.

Modern organisations frequently give leaders responsibility without real authority. How does this gap influence decision-making and performance?

Responsibility without authority is a terrible mix. There is a quote in the book from Edmund Burke, who detected this problem in the aftermath of the French Revolution. If you have responsibility but lack the authority to execute, you will either get nothing done or be forced to deliver by taking shortcuts that can have disastrous consequences. It results in poor quality outputs and places undue pressure on staff, ultimately leading to low morale and burnout.

People sometimes resist decision-making authority even while complaining about too many rules. Why do individuals feel uncomfortable with that responsibility?

Well, it probably depends a bit on cultural habits. In societies like New Zealand’s, which is quite egalitarian and conflict-averse, people often find it uncomfortable to tell others what to do, or to point out that their work was not up to standard. So, they prefer to be able to point to a rule book or set of independent, supposedly objective standards, as a kind of backup. And of course, if you don’t exercise personal discretion, you are less to blame if things go badly.

If organisations or governments want to reduce “stupid rules,” what practical steps should they take first?

The first place to look is probably the areas where rules (including standards) or procedural requirements have grown lengthy and complex. The ten-page dress code that General Motors used to have is a light-hearted example. It was reduced to two words: ’dress appropriately’. A simple rule, but it needs a dose of authority as a backstop. In technical areas, there could well be a need for complexity and detail. But if detailed standards and procedures appear to be trying to specify and standardise things that are really context-specific or uncertain, then rule proliferation or increasingly detailed formalised standards could well be replaced with something much simpler: a basic statement of purpose. That allows people the discretion to exercise their professional judgement and skill at all levels in the hierarchy.

The post Responsibility without authority fails, says Professor Natasha Hamilton-Hart appeared first on International Finance.

International Finance asked Thomas Engelmann, Head of Energy Transition at KGAL Investment Management GmbH & Co., regarding what should be the ideal implementation roadmap for “ReFuelEU Aviation.” Engelmann-led KGAL invests in energy transition-related projects and companies working in the domain. Thomas also acts as Managing Director for PtX Development Fund, the Power-to-X GmbH.

Previously, he was Global Head of Transaction and Investment Management, Infrastructure Equity, at Allianz Global Investors GmbH. Between 2008 and 2013, he worked for KGAL as Senior Director in the Renewable Energies and Infrastructure department, helping to build up the Renewable Energies portfolio. Engelmann gained his in-depth industry experience through various global senior management positions at Siemens AG and Siemens Financial Services (SFS).

He has held leadership positions in corporate M&A, as commercial director of industrial power plants, and as senior investment director, which show his significant know-how in technology-driven sustainable impact investments. He holds a Master’s in Business Administration and was a member of the Siemens Technical Graduate Programme. He is also a qualified Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA).

Synthetic sustainable aviation fuel is in the spotlight as European airlines prepare to challenge the EU’s 6% usage mandate by 2030. What is your view on this?

Understandably, airlines are concerned about costs and competitiveness. But the direction of travel is clear: decarbonising aviation requires scaling sustainable fuels, and some of the cost will ultimately be reflected in ticket prices.

Against geopolitical uncertainty and accelerating climate impacts, the EU’s 2030 targets are a key part of improving both climate performance and energy resilience. ReFuelEU provides a predictable timeline — what matters now is execution across the value chain.

European carriers may face penalties by the end of 2026 for missing emission targets. With the sector already under strain from the Middle East crisis, will this EU rule add further pressure?

ReFuelEU places the formal compliance obligation primarily on fuel suppliers: if blending requirements are not met, penalties apply at that level. Airlines buy the blended fuel, so the impact is mainly through fuel prices.

The practical way to reduce pressure is to lock in supply early. Long-term offtake agreements between fuel suppliers and SAF/e-SAF producers help bring projects to financial close, scale production, and avoid penalties and volatility.

In December 2025, IATA projected just 2.4 million metric tonnes of SAF availability in 2026, about 0.8% of total aviation fuel demand. Is the 2030 target realistic given this slow growth?

For conventional, biogenic SAF, the ramp-up is feasible because the pathways are proven and projects are already delivering volumes, especially from waste-based feedstocks.

The tougher part is e-SAF (synthetic fuels). Those projects are capital-intensive and typically need long-term purchase commitments to secure financing. If the industry converts the mandate into bankable offtake contracts now, the 2030 target is achievable. If not, supply will remain constrained.

The EU began phasing out free carbon permits for airlines in 2025. Will this make the transition to SAF significantly more expensive for carriers?

Phasing out free allowances will make carbon costs more visible, and part of that will be reflected in fares. That said, the transition to lower-carbon fuels cannot be postponed if aviation wants to deliver real CO2 reductions this decade.

As a rough order of magnitude, meeting the 2030 blending targets could add around €20 to a typical return ticket, with variation by route and fare type. For very low fares, the percentage impact can look larger — but delaying action risks higher costs and a more abrupt adjustment later.

Aviation also has an important advantage: meaningful emission reductions are possible through fuel switching without waiting for a full fleet renewal. Other industries must invest in parallel into the production progress (e.g. green steel production facilities).

SAF is central to aviation’s 2050 decarbonisation goals, yet production remains limited. What key factors are holding back supply?

The bottleneck is not the mandate — it’s the speed at which long-term offtake agreements are signed. Those contracts are what unlock financing and investment in new production capacity, especially for e-SAF.

Biogenic SAF can scale where sustainable waste feedstocks are available at a competitive cost. e-SAF needs new, capital-intensive plants and typically requires 10-year purchase commitments to reach financial close.

In short: stable policy plus bankable contracts equal new supply. Without contracts, projects slip, and volumes for 2030 remain out of reach. The prices per tonne can only go down, if scale effects are kicking in.

IATA has criticised the EU’s SAF mandate as costly and constrained by limited regional availability. Should the EU reconsider its 2030 target?

In my view, the EU should keep the 2030 target stable. Changing the rules now would undermine confidence and slow investment just as the market is starting to scale.

Today’s aircraft can already use blended fuels. SAF is one of the fastest routes to near-term CO2 reductions in aviation. Europe also has strong strategic reasons to build domestic e-SAF capacity and reduce dependency.

The priority is execution: convert mandated demand into long-term purchase commitments, bring projects to financial close, and build supply.

A 2025 Boston Consulting Group report found that airlines are allocating only 1% to 3% of their budgets to SAF. How much more investment is needed to scale up effectively?

Most of the investment need is upstream — in new SAF and especially e-SAF production capacity — rather than on airline balance sheets. Airlines will mainly feel the effect through fuel prices and supply contracts.

To give an illustration, meeting the 2030 e-SAF ramp-up in Europe likely requires multi-billion-euro annual fuel purchase commitments and double-digit billions in capital investment for new plants. The exact numbers depend on technology, electricity prices, and project location.

What turns those figures from “aspirations” into steel in the ground is straightforward: long-term, bankable offtake agreements.

What about claims by airlines that fuel producers are inflating SAF prices while failing to scale supply?

In the short term, prices are being shaped by tight supply, regulatory uncertainty, and high financing costs for new projects. The real question is whether higher prices are accompanied by measurable progress in contracted volumes and delivered supply.

To reduce both costs and volatility, the market needs transparency and long-term contracts that enable producers to invest. Clear certification and reporting also help ensure that SAF premiums are linked to verified blending and emissions reductions.

Willie Walsh, the Director-General of the IATA, has argued that transporting SAF to Europe could increase its overall carbon footprint. Do you agree with this concern?

Transport emissions matter and should be reflected transparently in lifecycle accounting. But that does not automatically argue against imports — it argues for smart supply chains and robust sustainability criteria.

At the same time, Europe should scale domestic SAF and e-SAF capacity wherever feasible. Otherwise, it risks trading one dependency for another. One- third of SAF and e-SAF production in Europe should be feasible.

To meet the 2030 target, should stakeholders, including the EU, IATA, and airlines, collaborate on a revised and unified roadmap?

Stakeholders should align on implementation—but within a stable policy framework. Reopening the mandate would create uncertainty and likely slow investment in a market that still needs scale.

The most useful “roadmap” is practical: long-term contracting, clear certification and reporting, infrastructure readiness, and mechanisms that accelerate bankable e-SAF projects. If we want supply to grow, we need to turn targets into purchase commitments that projects can finance against.

Done well, this is not only a climate policy — it is also an industrial and energy resilience opportunity for Europe.

The post Clean flight needs fuel scale: Thomas Engelmann appeared first on International Finance.

Trade group Airlines for Europe (A4E) has taken an adversarial stand against the SAF norms. Calling eSAF a ’nascent technology,’ A4E said projects would only produce 0.7% of volumes needed to meet the climate targets set by EU for the industry.

The use of eSAF falls under the “ReFuelEU Aviation” initiative, that sets requirements for aviation fuel suppliers to gradually increase the share of SAF blended into the conventional aviation fuel supplied at EU airports. The rule made it mandatory for regional airports to have 2% SAF in their overall fuel mix, a ratio which must rise to ⁠6% in 2030. By 2050, every European airport should have 70% SAF in their fuel mix.

Hurdles to eSAF

As per the aviation industry, the supply of synthetic jet fuel is not abundant, and the planned production facilities won’t come online any time soon to meet the mandate.

While cooking ⁠oil and animal waste have been the preferable raw materials for the fuel, the resultant SAF costs three to five times more than traditional jet fuel, while making up a paltry 0.3% of global jet fuel supply. The synthetic version (eSAF) is made from renewable energy sources, like captured carbon dioxide or green hydrogen, which too are expensive.

Another vocal critic has been the European Regions Airline Association (ERA). In October 2025, ERA stated that the policy’s implementation would create structural disadvantages for smaller regional carriers. The association revealed that the SAF’s supply is massively concentrated at the major European aviation hubs, leaving smaller, regional airports without access, thereby exposing Europe’s most remote communities to rising costs, complex compliance burdens, and the risk of reduced connectivity.

Even the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the industry’s apex trade association, is not impressed by ’ReFuelEU Aviation’. Willie Walsh, the Director-General, publicly panned the policy, by stating, “SAF production growth fell short of expectations as poorly designed mandates stalled momentum in the fledgling SAF industry. If the objective is to increase SAF production to further the decarbonisation of aviation, then they need to learn from failure and work with the airline industry to design incentives that will work.”

“Fuel costs remains a key driver of airline profitability, accounting for roughly 30% of operating expenses. Any increase, whether linked to SAF or other factors, naturally draws close attention. The recent Iran crisis is a good illustration of how sensitive airlines are to fuel price fluctuations. A4E recently pointed out that scaling SAF successfully will require not just higher production volumes, but also lower production costs and thus lower prices. For the EU’s ambitions to materialise, attracting private investment will be essential, which in turn depends on clear and stable market conditions for project developers,” according to Catherine Galano, Executive Director at Frontier Economics, and Stefan Rohm, Senior Principal at Frontier Economics.

Free carbon permits effectively mean that using fossil fuels carries no additional cost. As these permits are phased out, the cost of inaction increases.

This changes the equation: the cost gap between fossil jet fuel and SAF narrows, which can support SAF uptake. Over time, rising carbon prices combined with more efficient SAF production could even make fossil fuels more expensive than their decarbonised alternatives.

That said, this does not fully address competitiveness concerns. Policy measures need to be designed as part of a coherent and consistent overall framework.

Dishing out the mathematics

As per the IATA’s updated estimates for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) production, in 2025, SAF output was expected to reach 1.9 million tonnes (2.4 billion litres), nearly double the 1 million tonnes produced in 2024. In 2026, production growth is projected to slow, reaching 2.4 million tonnes.

Despite this increase from the 2024 tally, SAF will account for only 0.6% of total jet fuel consumption in 2025, rising to 0.8% in 2026. At current prices, the SAF premium was estimated to add approximately $3.6 billion in fuel costs for the airline industry in 2025.

“Mandates in the EU and UK have failed to accelerate SAF production and adoption. In Europe, ReFuelEU Aviation has sharply increased costs amid limited SAF capacity and oligopolistic supply chains. Fuel suppliers have raised profit margins so that airlines pay up to five times the price of conventional jet fuel and double the market price of SAF, without guaranteeing supply or consistent documentation. In the UK, SAF mandates have also triggered price spikes, forcing airlines to absorb significant costs. In total, airlines paid a premium of $2.9 billion for the limited 1.9 million tonnes of SAF available in 2025,” according to the report.

“Competitiveness is a legitimate concern for European carriers, especially when compared with airlines based outside Europe. This is at the core of arguments that SAF rules risk creating an uneven playing field. That said, it is important to consider what alternative Net Zero policies may be and wider implications for the sector. We find that alternative narrative oftentimes rely on the reduction of demand as a decarbonisation lever, which would ultimately harm the entire sector, including passengers. From an economic perspective, incentives matter. Penalties can encourage faster investment in SAF, fleet renewal, or innovative business models. In that sense, they can also create an opportunity for European carriers to be trailblazers, as suggested in the Draghi report. This does not mean regulatory distortions disappear. There is still a strong case for funding mechanisms to support the SAF value chain and for continued R&D in aeronautics. These tools can help share risks and sustain competitiveness over the medium to long term,” according to Catherine Galano and Stefan Rohm of Frontier Economics.

“In the EU, a lack of financial support, specifically for more nascent technologies like those used to produce cellulosic SAF and e-fuels is limiting SAF supply. We call these nascent technology fuel pathways ’advanced SAF’. In a 2025 study, we find that lack of revenue certainty is the primary barrier for advanced SAF production coming online in the EU. High upfront capital costs and market uncertainties continue to delay final investment decisions,” Chelsea Baldino, Fuels Program Lead at The International Council on Clean Transportation, told while speaking with International Finance.

Airlines also have a role to play. In that respect, it is encouraging that A4E has not ultimately challenged the 6% mandate as strongly as initially feared. Walsh sees a SAF supply shortfall, and that, in his opinion, will force airlines to review their 2030 SAF commitments.

“Regrettably, many airlines that have committed to use 10% SAF by 2030 will be forced to re-evaluate these commitments. SAF is not being produced in sufficient amounts to enable these airlines to achieve their ambition. These commitments were made in good faith, but simply cannot be delivered,” he observed.

Walsh also said that transporting SAF to Europe could increase its overall carbon footprint.

On this, Catherine and Stefan told International Finance, “From an economic perspective, SAF should be produced where it is most cost-effective and abundant, considering the footprint of logistics as well as the decarbonisation performance of various fuel types. For instance, importing competitively priced eSAF with higher emissions reduction potential could, in some cases, deliver greater overall benefits than relying on alternatives such as HEFA produced locally.”

“That said, the carbon footprint of imports does support the case for developing a European SAF value chain. More broadly, energy sovereignty and security, highlighted by the Ukraine and Iran conflicts, also strengthen the argument for domestic production,” they remarked.

Also, EU is reportedly mulling over completely phasing out free carbon emissions allowances for the aviation sector, moving to full auctioning by 2026 to align with climate goals.

SAF production: A Bumpy Ride

A study from the International Council of Clean Transportation (ICCT), published in October 2025, found SAF costing between two to five times more than fossil jet fuel, with mechanisms like public and private investment and cost sharing being crucial for building a deep ecosystem, that will in turn make airlines’ green transition a budget-friendly one.

“Although SAF can be made from many different materials and conversion processes, all of them are currently costlier than fossil jet fuel. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency estimated that the average production cost of SAF in 2024 ranged from €1,461 per tonne (for biofuels) to €7,695 per tonne (for e-fuels). We calculate that this is a cost premium of 2.1–10.6x compared with fossil jet fuel by converting fossil jet production costs from the International Energy Agency, reported in US dollars per litre, into equivalent units,” according to the report.

“Meeting EU targets will require what could be described as an ‘investment shock’ to scale production capacity. Today’s SAF output, despite exceeding the EU’s 2% mandate in 2025, is largely based on biofuels such as HEFA, which face feedstock limitations and are unlikely to cover more than about 10% of global demand even under optimistic assumptions. Given the scale of investment needed, attracting private capital is critical. But investors need long-term visibility on demand and revenues. This is precisely what mandates and penalties are designed to provide. The current slow growth could mean that the signal from mandates is still too weak. But it may also reflect uncertainty about how firmly these policies will be enforced. This highlights the importance of regulatory stability, alongside targeted support mechanisms to improve project financeability,” Catherine and Stefan told the International Finance.

Investigating the reason behind SAF’s high price, ICCT found a correlation with high value of feedstocks that power the production. Virgin vegetable oil is more expensive than kerosene. Making waste-based SAF, on the other hand, with high cellulosic content is expensive due to inefficient supply chains for sourcing raw material and the enzymes needed to break down feedstocks into “’drop-in’” fuel.

eSAF requires high quantities of renewable electricity to produce renewable hydrogen (i.e., hydrogen produced via electrolysis using 100% renewable electricity) and extract diluted carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Then add the project mismanagement. As per ICCT, SAF projects take minimum five years to reach final investment decision (a critical stage during project development that indicates whether projects are ready to move forward to construction), and many projects fail before reaching this stage. The ratio of SAF projects reaching final investment decision, as per consulting group BCG, was at dismal 30% in 2025.

Noting that helping advanced SAF producers reach financial investment decision in the EU is an urgent priority for the bloc’s policymakers, Baldino remarked, “The EU’s Sustainable Transport Investment Plan (STIP) announced several measures the EU is taking to address economic issues. The Commission will launch pilot projects, including one that sets up a double-sided auction for e-SAF. This double-sided auction will establish a “’market intermediary’” that connects SAF suppliers and consumers, offering long-term contracts to provide revenue certainty to fuel producers as well as short-term contracts on the offtake side. The Commission also commits to assessing the feasibility of an EU-wide double auction to support both aviation and marine sustainable fuels. If designed and implemented quickly, such measures could provide the certainty needed to get today’s advanced SAF projects off the ground and accelerate progress toward fulfilling ReFuelEU SAF targets.”

While the ICCT study validated IAF’s apprehensions about SAF shortfall, Boston Consulting Group’s March 2026 estimates couldn’t promise a better future either.

The report, prepared after interviewing more than 500 executives at about 200 aviation-related companies, found that airlines and airports are investing only 1% to 3% of revenue or budget allocation to SAF, with high production costs and fuel prices remaining the major challenges to adoption.

“While SAF supply increased 1,150% worldwide over the last three years, announcements for new production facilities fell by 50% to 70% from 2022 to 2023, largely due to economic uncertainty, and higher energy and operating costs,” BCG stated, while projecting the fuel’s supply to fall 30% to 45% short of commercial aviation’s 2030 targets.

Giving their take on the BCG report, Catherine and Stefan said, “Airlines are only one part of the investment landscape. Aircraft and engine manufacturers, airport operators, and private investors are also contributing. Public funding – through EU instruments like the Hydrogen Bank or national programmes – already plays a role as well. Beyond reducing uncertainty, the key challenge is how to allocate risk efficiently across all these stakeholders. Incentives and risk-bearing capacities differ along the value chain. Airlines are central because they ultimately drive demand, but they are not the only actors that matter.”

All the studies had one thing common: they pointed out the massive cost of E-kerosene and other SAF raw materials.

Baldino answered, “There are several options for the EU to address these economic concerns. First, the ETS includes a mechanism where 20 million allowances from the ETS go towards reimbursing airlines to cover a percentage of the price gap between SAF and fossil fuels between 2024 and 2030. Assuming an EU-ETS price of 80 €/tCO2e, the total subsidy fund would come to €1.6 billion. However, given that the vast majority of SAF on the market is commercial Hydro processed Esthers and Fatty Acid (HEFA), and the programme only runs until 2030, it is likely that most, if not all, of this ETS funding will not help close the cost gap for advanced SAF. The ETS is currently under review, though, so the Commission has an opportunity to expand the SAF allowances programme and earmark some of the SAF allowances for advanced SAF pathways.”

EU presses ahead

Despite industry concerns, it seems that EU is in mood to slow down on its SAF game. It has already launched the “’eSAF Early Movers Coalition’,” bringing together member states that have committed to scaling up the fuel’s production. Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain have so far announced their participation, with the goal of mobilising at least €500 million ($580 million) for large-scale eSAF projects.

In December 2025, one of Europe’s leading SAF innovators, Metafuels, awarded construction firm McDermott a contract for its eSAF plant in Rotterdam. Metafuels will construct the plant at the Evos terminal in the Port of Rotterdam. It will utilise Metafuels’ high-yield methanol-to-jet technology, “’aerobrew’,” and serve as a blueprint for large-scale eSAF production across Europe.

Finnish venture Liquid Sun too launched what it claims is Europe’s eSAF pilot plant in Espoo. The unit will convert biogenic carbon dioxide and hydrogen produced with renewable electricity into synthetic crude oil, which will be then refined into eSAF.

Yes, the continent is scaling up its eSAF efforts. But, two questions remain: Will enough eSAF be available to each and every European airport by 2030? Will the green journey be budget-friendly for both airlines and the passengers?

The immediate priority for the EU will be to take the aviation sector stakeholders into confidence, and make sure that the journey to a carbon-free future remains on track.

The post SAF is new flashpoint between EU and airlines appeared first on International Finance.

AI took centerstage in the event, with Huawei introducing an in-car voice-activated agent dubbed Celia. CATL, on the other hand, grabbed headlines through its flying car concept, apart from displaying a lighter-weight product offering over 1000-km range, with the product reportedly possessing charging capability from 10% capacity to 98% in under seven minutes.

The Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD rewrote the innovation playbook, by making a giant freezer the main piece of attraction in its pavilion. Inside of the freezer, a car dripping with icicles showed the company’s new fast-charging system’s ability to power up a battery even in temperatures of -30° Celsius.

Western automakers up for collaboration

Despite the Chinese automobile industry being known for its brutal price wars and overcapacity, both Chinese companies and their foreign counterparts are gung ho about their prospects.

Germany’s Volkswagen, the largest overseas automaker by market share in the world’s second-largest economy, unveiled its new electric ID.UNYX 08. It has tied up with Xpeng to develop the vehicle’s electrical architecture, while Horizon Robotics took part in realising the in-car AI agent.

Huawei, in 2026 alone, will be investing 18 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) in smart driving research and development. Its software and components are currently used in some 50 models, with the company anticipating the number to double to 100 by the year-end. CATL, which increased its research budget by 19% to $3.2 billion in 2025, will be raising another $5 billion in the coming days.

Despite industry profit falling 18% in Q1 2026, along with dipping sales profit margin, revenues and outputs, the Chinese automotive sector is in no mood to back down on the R&D front, while foreign automakers are collaborating with local ecosystem players to ramp up their technology game in the biggest global car market.

Many of the vehicles, which made their debut in Beijing Auto Show, will likely end up being in European markets in the coming days.

“The stronger presence and engagement of global companies at the Beijing Auto Show highlights China’s rising importance as a centre for automotive innovation, and one of the world’s fastest-evolving car markets, especially as the industry speeds up its transition toward electric and smart mobility technologies,” Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), told the Global Times.

There was a change in tone among Western automakers during the auto show. Andreas Mindt, Volkswagen’s Head of Design, dubbed the event as ‘arguably the world’s largest’, while noting positive developments like more participants, global premieres, and new car launches, alongside rapid progress in EVs, battery technology, and self-driving systems.

“Volkswagen Group has been part of Auto China since 1990. No other international automotive player has such a great history like we have in China. China is like a fitness centre for the automotive industry. We saw it, we embraced it, and we changed ourselves,” said Oliver Blume, the German automaker’s CEO.

Volkswagen, with the goal of defending its position as China’s top-selling foreign automaker, will be launching over 20 new energy vehicle (NEV) models in the world’s largest vehicle market, a tally which will reach around 50 by 2030.

Volkswagen’s German peer, Mercedes-Benz, too is making electrification and intelligent technologies as pivots of their vehicle line-ups in China, while putting equal focus on luxury and high-end custom offerings.

As per Cui, the increasing engagement between global automakers and their Chinese counterparts only shows the evolution of the world’s largest vehicle market as a key hub for innovation, testing, and competition across new ideas, products, and business models.

“More and more domestic and overseas car brands are putting more investment into electrification, a move that clearly demonstrates there is no such thing as ‘overcapacity’ because the market demand is huge and expanding,” he noted.

US opting for tested protectionism

While the Beijing Auto Show gave a glimpse of the changing reality of the global automobile sector, with European automakers now seeing their Chinese counterparts as peers more than rivals, their American counterparts have taken a different direction.

Ford CEO Jim Farley doesn’t want Chinese companies on American shores, citing the move to be ‘devastating’ to domestic manufacturing. General Motors boss Mary Barra shares this view. In early 2026, she called the deal by Canada to allow Chinese EVs into the North American country a risk to the continent’s auto manufacturing sector, jobs and national security.

Both Farley and Barra found support within the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (AAI). AAI, that represents the US Big Three (General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Stellantis) and several other US manufacturers, has been stating that China poses a real threat to the American automotive sector.

In December 2025, AAI had urged Congress to maintain the Joe Bidenera ban on import of certain Chinese technologies and software, including vehicles produced in the world’s second-largest economy.

As per Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, two factors: extremely low cost of capital due to heavy government subsidies and equally cheaper labour costs, compared to the figures in the United States, are giving Chinese EVs massive advantages over their Western counterparts. While current American tariffs do help balance prices and protect US manufacturing, Scaringe still wants a long-term protectionist solution.

Farley previously described Chinesemade cars as an ‘existential threat’ to the US auto market, citing technological advances, along with subsidies and labourinfrastructure support that reduce production costs. Despite Washington imposing tariffs of over 100% on Chinese vehicles, the Ford CEO strictly advised the Donald Trump administration against changing import rules, as China manufacturing EVs in the US will end up affecting American automakers on consumer price points.

As per Bloomberg data, in 2025, BYD surpassed Ford in total global vehicle sales, by dispatching approximately 4.6 million units, while Ford’s global wholesales declined nearly 2% to 4.4 million units.

However, there is an irony. Ford reportedly discussed the potential of joint ventures between the American auto company and Beijing-based Xiaomi with President Donald Trump, with the plan of allowing China to manufacture electric vehicles in the United States and sell them through a US-controlled joint venture. Ford denied the reports.

Ford also held talks with BYD to expand battery-supply partnerships, and explored manufacturing collaborations in Europe with Hong Kong-based Geely Automobile Holdings.

In January 2026, in the middle of the US-Canada trade war, Canada granted China an annual quota of 49,000 EVs, while stating that vehicles within this quota would enjoy the most-favoured-nation (MFN) tariff rate of 6.1% and be exempted from the 100% additional tariff.

The move from the Mark Carney government had one motive: catalysing considerable new Chinese joint-venture investment in Canada, with Ottawa itself taking the lead by working with Chinese auto manufacturers on timely vehicle certifications.

However, both Washington and Ottawa have an intertwined supply chain, with car parts and vehicles moving with ease under trade pacts first enacted three decades ago. China’s entrance in North America is bothering Uncle Sam given the fact that Canada is a major sales driver for Detroit’s carmakers. In 2025, Ford Motor, GM and Jeep maker Stellantis sold more than 700,000 vehicles combined in Canada.

Things have changed in Trump 2.0, with Canada’s auto industry taking a massive hit due the Trump administration levying tariffs on vehicles and parts made there. American automakers, to save themselves from the punitive measure, scaled down manufacturing in the neighbouring country.

Chinese players have jumped in to fill the void. As per reports, Chery, by end of April 2026, shipped the first vehicles to the North American country, including J5 from the sub-brand Omoda and Jaecoo. BYD, in March, registered its passenger vehicle manufacturing plants with Transport Canada’s Appendix G preclearance registry, the first Chinese automaker to do so in the Northern American country’s consumer vehicle segment. Expect others to follow suit.

There has been opposition against the Canada-China EV deal. CVMA (Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association) President Brian Kingston, apart from warning about Chinese automakers benefiting from ‘weak or non-existent labour rights’ that suppress wages and distort competition, informed the House of Commons that the 49,000-vehicle quota is “equivalent to 30% of the total number of EVs sold in Canada last year”. The lobby group has also backed the Conservative Party’s proposal to scrap the Chinese EV quota.

However, what is trumping these concerns is the vehicle buying preference of the Canadians. A poll by Nanos Research Group for Bloomberg News, conducted among 1,009 Canadians in early 2026, saw 53% of the participants stating the China factor would have no effect on their buying decision.

An intense battle ahead

A rare political consensus was witnessed on April 28, with more than 70 Democrat lawmakers urging Trump not to permit Chinese automakers to build or sell cars in the United States, with the urge of “not ceding the American auto industry to a strategic competitor ⁠intent on global dominance” emerging as the common theme.

The following day, Republican Bernie Moreno and his Democrat colleague Elissa Slotkin introduced bipartisan legislation to harden the American ban further. These political actions might have been triggered by Trump’s January statement, in which he expressed his openness to Chinese automakers building vehicles in the United States.

However, warning signs have already started showing up. Despite Pete Hoekstra, US Ambassador to Canada, announcing that Chinese-made EVs entering Canada will be barred from crossing into the United States, a Daily Mail report claims that ‘cheap Chinese Cars’ have been spotted in Texas towns bordering Mexico, despite a January 2025 executive order (that banned building or selling of Chinese vehicles in the US).

“Chinese-manufactured vehicles are legal in Mexico. El Paso residents are just miles from the southern border and have seen Chinese vehicles, such as Geely Auto and BYD, slip into the city,” according to the report. The information, if authenticated, could unsettle policymakers and industry players.

The post Beijing Auto Show: Europe collaborates, US frets appeared first on International Finance.

The cumulative value of used vehicles sold reached R14.32 billion in January, up from R12.89 billion in December, and R12.59 billion a year earlier. The average transaction price moderated slightly to R416,082 from R419,537 in December 2025, while average mileage declined to 70,938 km, continuing a gradual downward trend.

Toyota continued to capture the majority share in the used vehicle market, with 5,876 units sold in January, ahead of Volkswagen (4,733) and Ford (3,577).

Decoding Ford’s figures, more than half of the total came from Ranger sales, underscoring the continued strength in the bakkie segment. This highly competitive, core automotive market focuses on utility, durability, and lifestyle.

The best-selling used vehicles

According to AutoTrader data, at the model level, the Ford Ranger retained its position as South Africa’s best-selling used vehicle, with 2,069 units sold, up 6.3% year-on-year, followed by the Toyota Hilux (1,604 units), and Volkswagen’s Polo Vivo and Polo. Together, these four maintained their positions among the top four best-selling models.

Compact and value-driven models showed some of the strongest gains. The Suzuki Swift moved ahead of the Toyota Fortuner in overall rankings, with 794 units sold and year-on-year growth of nearly 25%. The Toyota Corolla Cross and Hyundai Grand i10 also recorded notable annual increases, reflecting a continued shift towards smaller, more affordable vehicles.

None of the top 10 models posted a year-on-year decline, although performance varied across brands. Suzuki recorded the greatest month-on-month improvement, while Hyundai achieved the highest annual growth rate. BMW was the only major brand to register a monthly decline, although it remained up year-on-year.

AutoTrader’s “2025 Annual Car Industry Report” reveals the emergence of quite a few trends. One among them is established industry players maintaining strong sales figures. Among the vehicle categories, while compact hatchbacks gained a significant market space, SUVs further consolidated their dominance. If Chinese brands gaining measurable ground was the surprise factor, new energy vehicles (especially hybrid ones) gaining prominence gave a sneak peek at the African country’s direction towards a clean transport sector.

AutoTrader CEO George Mienie stated, “The used car market delivered solid growth. A total of 383,410 used vehicles were sold in 2025, generating R160.1 billion in sales value, representing a 7% increase over 2024. Four interest rate cuts in January, May, July, and November 2025, reduced borrowing costs and provided meaningful relief to consumers. However, while economic conditions improved, buyer behaviour remained disciplined. If anything, 2025 reinforced how firmly affordability and practicality now anchor local purchasing decisions.”

Which models were in demand

Among second-hand cars, search behaviour shifted at the brand and model level. BMW was the most-searched brand on AutoTrader, with 76 million searches. On a model level, the Volkswagen Polo was the most-searched, displacing the Toyota Hilux from its long-standing leadership position. On the search interest front, Ford Ranger, Volkswagen Polo Vivo, and Toyota Hilux continue to dominate overall sales volumes, indicating the strength of established names in the used market.

While the Ford Ranger maintained its position as the most-enquired bakkie vehicle, its demand remained in the higher territory, despite growing cost pressures. Compact hatchbacks have earned significant momentum in the used car market, with models such as the Suzuki Swift and Toyota Starlet capturing a larger share of the market.

“The Swift stood out as the fastest-selling used vehicle in South Africa, averaging just 26 days before sale. That turnaround time reflects strong underlying demand for vehicles that are affordable to finance, efficient to run, and practical for everyday use,” Mienie stated.

While the average used car price grew 3% year-on-year to R417,584 in 2025, the average vehicle age remains five years. The average mileage was 73,646 km.

Pragmatic approach to electric vehicles

The new energy segment (electric vehicles) grew by a strong 73% in 2025, powered by hybrid cars. Hybrids ended up accounting for nearly 85% of all new-energy vehicles sold. This growth also gave an insight into South Africans’ EV adoption strategy: choosing practical, money-saving options instead of waiting for full electric cars that need better charging networks and lower prices.

Hybrids (known for combining a petrol engine with an electric motor) saw sales jumping 76% compared with 2024, with 4,888 units changing hands. In total, 5,727 used hybrids and battery electric vehicles were sold by the end of December 2025, showing steady interest in greener driving options. This segment was dominated by locally built Toyota Corolla Cross Hybrid, with many buyers opting for the model’s reliability, affordability in the used market, and, most importantly, the absence of range anxiety of pure electric cars.

Other popular models included the Volvo EX30, and various Toyota and Lexus hybrids, vehicles that offer good fuel savings.

Battery electric vehicles, despite showing a 55% year-on-year increase, remained a distant second in the new-energy car market.

Used hybrids have proven to be game-changers for South African families and first-time car buyers, as these vehicles use less fuel than ordinary petrol cars, produce fewer emissions, and often come with lower running costs, during an age of high petrol prices, and living expenses. Because hybrids do not rely completely on charging infrastructure, they suit South African roads and lifestyles better than full electric cars for now.

China: New player in the sector

While European, American, Japanese, and Korean vehicle brands have been dominating both the new and used vehicle markets, 2025 witnessed the emergence of Chinese brands in the sector.

Chery Tiggo 4 Pro was the best-selling used Chinese car. The crossover, since 2025, has remained one of South Africa’s best-selling new passenger cars, with more than 1,000 units sold each month. Last year, 3,144 units were sold, underscoring the popularity of Chery’s smallest offering. With an average price of R284,779, it is one of the cheapest cars on the list, both on the new and used-car segments, despite its low average mileage of 21,970 km, and a registration age of just two years.

Next is the Haval Jolion, which competes in the same crossover class. However, with fewer models, particularly more budget-focused derivatives (the cheapest new version is R348,950), sales are slightly lower at 2,736 units.

The oldest entry on the list was the Great Wall Motor’s discontinued six-year-old Haval H2, which landed at the sixth spot with 1,063 units, while the much newer Omoda C5 came seventh with 806 purchases.

While vehicles like Chery Tiggo 4 Pro and Haval Jolion are mostly ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicles with some plugless hybrid variants, Chinese automobile players have reportedly started offering more plugin options. These players, already known for their rapid global expansion (using affordability as a weapon), are now sweetening things further for their South African customers by adding more PHEVs (Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles) and BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles) to both the new and second-hand segments.

Sales of plugin hybrids (PHEVs) were up 280% in 2025 compared with 2024, with brands like Haval, Chery, Omoda, Geely and BYD leading the charge.

“Chinese vehicle manufacturers have learnt how to narrow the gap between cost and perceived value, delivering around 80% of the consumer experience at roughly 60% of the price of traditional players. By focusing on tangible performance and visible benefits rather than legacy branding, they have capitalised on a shift in consumer behaviour. As buyers become more informed and discerning, brand loyalty is weakening, replaced by an expectation for high-quality products that justify every rand spent,” Mienie told Creamer Media’s Engineering News.

Bakkies rule the roost

Bakkies, the Ford Ranger in particular, had a massive share in the used car segment. These are basically pickup trucks with open cargo beds. Renowned as ‘workhorses’ for cargo, bakkies have evolved into popular lifestyle vehicles in the African nation.

According to the AutoTrader data, the used car market shipped 30,742 vehicles in December 2025, with 1,744 being Ford Rangers. Buyers reportedly opted for four-year-old Rangers with an average mileage of 83,958km.

The average used Ranger sold last year fetched a price of R497,960, which represents a saving of nearly R80,000 compared to buying the cheapest variant of the popular bakkie brand new.

In contrast, the most expensive version of the Ranger is the 3.0T V6 Raptor double-cab, which fetches a handsome price of R1,271,000.

A used Ranger comes in many forms: single-cab workhorses, which are found on construction sites and farms, while double-cab variants are often used by families to haul children to and from school. Add the affordable price factor, and buying the vehicle becomes a win-win deal for average South Africans.

For businesses, Ranger, in its current-generation form, offers a reliable fleet option. Be it the powerful Raptor, or versions like XL single-cab and XLT double-cab, they offer varieties like the cheapest, mid-range, and most expensive models, both on the new and used markets.

With regard to Bakkie’s popularity in South Africa, Nissan sold a grand total of 434 units of NP200 in March 2025, despite the fact that the vehicle is no longer officially on sale. It was supposed to be the Japanese company’s last compact bakkie in the South African market, before its discontinuation in April 2024.

Despite Nissan pulling the plug on its NP200, citing ageing design as the primary factor, the model continues to be the workhorse for small businesses and will remain one of the dominating names in the second-hand car market.

Decoding the customer mindset

The year 2025 was the one when South Africa faced an acute cost-of-living crisis. The nation’s Competition Commission’s inaugural ’Cost of Living Report’, which came out in September, presented the harsh reality: prices for electricity, water, education, and food outpacing overall inflation.

Electricity prices saw a 68% increase, followed by water with 50%, exceeding the general inflation rate, which itself stood at 28%. Food staples, such as brown bread, maize meal, and eggs, were witnessing widening margins, or sticky prices in some cases, despite falling producer costs.

With this background, four interest rate cuts were implemented in the year, totalling 100 basis points. Customers bought cars, but with a lot of financial discipline and self-restraint, and that’s what ended up helping the second-hand car industry.

During an interaction with Dealerfloor, Mienie stated, “Buyers are still active, but they are more deliberate and value-driven than ever before. The brands gaining traction are those aligning product offering, pricing and perceived quality with real-world affordability constraints.”

While Ford Ranger, Volkswagen Polo Vivo and Toyota Hilux dominated overall transactions and bakkies topped the chart, reduced financing costs led to accelerated demand for smaller, more economical vehicles. What the recent cost-of-living crisis has told the South Africans is that financing costs for new vehicles go up with every cycle of interest rate climb. Add monthly repayments and insurance premiums, and the situation leads to cash bleeding. A second-hand car, by contrast, often delivers the same utility at a far gentler price point.

According to reports, buyers are also reducing long-term financing exposure by taking smaller loans while also lowering costs on insurance, licence and registration fronts.

The availability of vehicle history reports and online valuation tools allows consumers to assess pricing, mileage and ownership records with ease. If you factor in the dealers’ game of elevating their used-car offerings, providing certified pre-owned vehicles, service plans and warranties, customers are getting an experience similar to buying a new car.

Car ownership is increasingly becoming a practical tool rather than a status symbol. In a climate where every rand counts, buyers are bound to think whether they should complicate their financial health further by buying a brand-new car, with higher financing costs. Thus, the so-called second-hand, but tried-and-tested models, with widespread service support, are capturing the buyers’ minds.

More than swanky features, brands and models known for longevity are in high demand, particularly those with solid fuel economy and manageable maintenance costs. Priority is to choose cars that fit South Africans’ lifestyles, not just their aspirations.

The post South Africa’s used car market heats up appeared first on International Finance.

Bitcoin (BTC) saw a brutal sell-off in early 2026 as it plunged from a peak of $126,000 to below $63,000. This has led people to try deciphering the market realities, as the crash exposed the cracks in the mythology of Bitcoin as an ever-booming asset.

Most analysts believe it was a new financial era. The digital asset broke the six-figure threshold in late 2024, and by early 2025, it was seen as the most coveted asset in this new financial landscape. The spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) brought Wall Street money into the crypto market, and the Trump administration, which was initially hostile to cryptocurrencies, became incredibly friendly.

Of course, there was also the halving cycle. Bitcoin’s four-yearly supply shock was as punctual as always. By October 2025, the price touched $126,000, and the faithful acolytes and crypto billionaires were already mapping $200,000 and beyond.

Then the bottom fell out. Prices have been slashed in half from their October peak, with the price plunging way below the $63,000 mark in February 2026 for a staggering fall of around 50% in just four months. This crash has caused significant panic in the market as billions of dollars disappeared over a handful of sessions, and many leveraged traders were flushed out. Furthermore, the Spot ETF, which was intended to legitimise the cryptocurrency as a stable asset, instead forced sellers to mechanically dump coins in a market that was already collapsing.

Yes, it was a bloody season, even by crypto’s permissive standards, but this article is not about how bad it was, but what it reveals. Is crypto the new digital gold, or is it just a speculative asset with institutional backing?

Modern crypto crash

Bitcoin has come a long way from being one of the riskiest assets in the world. It has slowly garnered a reputation as something that will keep increasing in value.

To understand this sell-off and why it hit so hard, we need to look at how the market was built over the last two years and examine the structures that drove the last rally and its inevitable collapse.

Firstly, let’s examine leverage. The crypto derivatives market is a paradise for aggressive traders, and the latest cycle drew hordes of them. When the digital currency eroded from its $80,000 to $90,000 range in early February, the markets saw almost $279 million in leveraged positions liquidated within a single day. Almost $170 million of that was concentrated in long positions.

Just a few days later, within a single hour, $80 million in liquidations were produced, and $48 million of it was Bitcoin alone.

While the data is not record-breaking or particularly alarming in isolation, it remains significant due to the feedback loops and self-fulfilling prophecies it creates.

Academic research specifically examining Bitcoin futures markets at BitMEX revealed that daily forced liquidations average approximately 3.5% of open interest for long positions, largely because many traders utilise effective leverage levels of 60x or more. In an environment like that, even a moderate price decline leads to those margin calls. Exchanges then dump collateral to cover those calls, and the prices dwindle further, liquidating more positions. This cascade is fast, mechanical, and transforms something that is otherwise manageable into a rout.

But we can’t blame everything on leverage. It was just an amplifier and not what started this domino effect. The foundational reasons for this crash were a structural shift in the behaviour of a new and yet consequential set of players. Namely, the ETF complex.

New buyers become sellers

Experts say that the US spot Bitcoin ETF launch was a watershed moment. It allowed retail and institutional investors to access the digital currency through a regulated, familiar vehicle without managing balances or private keys for the first time.

Within the first two trading days of 2026, $1.2 billion in net inflows were recorded on US ETFs. It is an extraordinary pace, which reassured investors that the historic run of 2024 and 2025 probably might not end anytime soon.

Then the rhythm broke. The shockwaves emerged with ETF flows flipping negative by January 6. Research by Binance reported that, in 2026, demand had turned into a net negative, with year-to-date flows of roughly minus 4,595 BTC. This meant that the funds, on balance, were being sold into the market rather than bought.

A separate analysis claimed US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $4.5 billion in net outflows in 2026, which was the longest sustained outflow streak since early 2025.

It’s different this time around because in previous cycles, after every halving, retail enthusiasm fades, and the tourist capital is usually invested in offshore derivatives or speculative altcoins. This is referred to as altseason.

Most traders who make big money during the sell-off re-divert that wealth into up-and-coming coins. But this season, there was no altseason rally. The cryptocurrency kept booming indefinitely. There was even talk that an altcoin season might not happen again.

ETFs have changed the equation. When investors redeem ETF shares, the fund must sell underlying altcoins to meet these demands. It is programmed that way and is non-discretionary. It happens in large blocks and hits a market which, despite its growth, has relatively thin spot liquidity compared to traditional assets.

The ETF paradox is visible. The institutionalisation of BTC was supposed to stabilise the asset and broaden the ownership base. Instead, it created a new system where retail fear can rapidly and efficiently transmit into largescale spot selling. This legitimisation was celebrated by bulls, yet that same mechanism has handed a button for self-annihilation to the market.

The macro context

And to top it all off, the macroeconomy couldn’t be more hostile to Bitcoin. The wars in Europe, Israel and possible geopolitical crises in Taiwan and Iran, along with the tariff wars, have killed the appetite of central banks around the world. Markets have been tightening and de-risking globally.

The same fears that cause volatility in traditional markets are more profound now. Gold has surged above $5,500 per ounce, serving as a safe haven for assets as it has for thousands of years. Meanwhile, the digital asset (which was supposed to be a storehouse of wealth and was dubbed the ‘digital gold’) has fallen roughly 20% year-todate as of early February. It is a development that is impossible to miss.

The whole idea of the blockchain asset was ‘gold but better’ because someone could steal your gold from your house, banks might collapse, and gold is harder to transport from one country to another. It also had all the good properties of gold in the sense that no one could take it from you. It was in a hidden, encrypted wallet that the government had no access to, and the prices always kept booming.

It was considered a reliable and safe asset, but the global crisis has proven that the digital currency might not be as reliable an asset as people thought it was, and is definitely not a dependable replacement for gold.

The policies that have been baked in place by governments around the world are not conducive either. Since COVID-19, near-zero rates, and quantitative easing, banks have made a coordinated retreat from their usual yet extraordinary monetary accommodation.

The US Federal Reserve drained $2.8 trillion from its balance sheet between the pandemic peak and late 2025, only taking a slight U-turn in December. The European Central Bank was no different and shed $3 trillion since mid-2022. Even the Bank of Japan (which was a perennial holdout historically) has embraced inflation and is shrinking its own balance sheets.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Some rate cuts are set to return in 2026. However, there has been a generational shift. Real yields are positive, and even cash offers dependable returns. The dollar is firm despite day-to-day volatility. Bitcoin, which had thrived in the era of free money, unprofitable growth companies, and speculative tech, is a natural casualty of this change in philosophy.

The cryptocurrency is correlated with the Nasdaq and other high-beta risk assets (assets with high volatility relative to the market). It is telling of what the asset has evolved into, which is a macro trading instrument.

It only rallies when there is abundant liquidity and a great appetite for risk, and is dumped the moment traders have cold feet.

The digital gold question

Now let’s get to the heart of the matter. In a world of uncertainty, war, fatigue, plague, and zero-sum games, gold seems like the most reliable asset to hold on to. Everyone wants it, and no culture would deny it.

The digital gold thesis is underpinned by two important claims, the first being that Bitcoin acts as a store of value that builds and retains purchasing power across full cycles despite its inherent volatility. And the second claim suggests that during a crisis, the cryptocurrency behaves like gold, and serves as an effective hedge against both monetary debasement and geopolitical uncertainty.

“Bitcoin is sensitive to liquidity. In phases when capital becomes cautious, BTC often behaves not like a protective shield, but like a real risk asset,” according to the views of analysts on the website of Aequifin, a Germany-based fintech platform for litigation funding.

There are no arguments about the first claim. The digital asset has proven its resilience across years, seeing highs and lows but coming back up every halving cycle. Previously, it had lost 70% to 80% of its value, yet it has soared to new heights every time. Long-term holders have been rewarded in a way that no other asset has rewarded its holders.

Research on post-halving dynamics has confirmed that speculative cycle and supply shock patterns are broadly intact.

It is when it comes to the second claim (the idea of the cryptocurrency as a go-to asset during a crisis) that things get murky.

Research across multiple methodologies, including VAR models, GARCH analysis, and multi-factor frameworks, has concluded that BTC cannot function as a safe haven akin to gold. Studies examining correlations between the digital currency, gold, oil, and equities indicate that Bitcoin is the second riskiest asset in the sample, and significantly more volatile than gold, making it more comparable to crude oil or leveraged growth stocks than to defensive instruments.

Furthermore, Quantile VAR spillover methods reveal that under normal and bullish conditions, BTC acts as a net transmitter of risk to other assets, while in times of crisis, it amplifies shocks rather than absorbing them, such as gold and treasuries.

The crash of 2026 exposes an uncomfortable reality. The conditions that ought to have been quite attractive, like geopolitical risk, currency uncertainty, and distrust of institutional finance, have not made it soar to new heights. Instead, there has been a 50% depreciation. Gold, however, has reached new heights. It’s not that Bitcoin didn’t rally; it crashed.

Nations that bet big

No one has bet bigger on the digital currency than El Salvador and the Central African Republic. Two nations, continents apart, that granted the blockchain asset full legal tender status. Both nations, as a consequence, have struggled considerably.

El Salvador decided to gamble in September 2021, presenting itself as a visionary. It sounded like a small, dollarised economy was going to leapfrog traditional financial infrastructure to reduce remittance costs and attract crypto- tourists, much like Dubai.

It was going to be a financial laboratory, but the experiment went awry. Research has found that BTC was only used for 1.9% of transactions in the first year. A lot of Salvadorans downloaded the government’s Chivo wallet to collect a one-time $30 incentive, but didn’t open it again.

There were many problems, including technical friction, price volatility, and patchy internet access; consequently, many ordinary citizens saw it as absolutely impractical. However, tourism got a boost, with a rise of 22% in 2024. The digital asset was one of the primary attractions for international visitors, but the macro picture was collapsing. The IMF flagged the legal tender arrangement, citing risks to financial stability, consumer risk, and fiscal integrity.

“El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment has failed. Public distrust, low adoption, technological problems, and volatility are leading to a rollback of the legal tender policy in 2025,” tweeted Ricardo V. Lago, an independent commentator on Latin American economics, on X in November 2025.

In early 2025, El Salvador sought a $1.4 billion loan from the IMF. One of the conditions laid down by the IMF for loan eligibility was the demotion of Bitcoin and the revocation of its legal tender status. El Salvador received the loan and revoked the legal tender status of the crypto asset. Now, merchants aren’t required to accept the digital currency. The government still has its digital currency holdings, but the experiment has failed. El Salvador is now just another crypto-friendly jurisdiction, not a Bitcoin economy.

The Central African Republic had an even worse crypto journey. CAR adopted the digital asset as legal tender in April 2022, despite having a population where only 11%-14% have internet access.

The government launched a partially Bitcoin-backed national cryptocurrency called Sango Coin, and promised foreign investors citizenship, land rights, and access to natural resources in exchange for token purchases. However, the country’s constitutional court pushed back against selling citizenship via crypto, calling it unconstitutional.

Sango Coin made less than €2 million, which is far short of its target, and collapsed. Researchers who investigated the experiment described the programme as opaque, poorly designed, and constructed for the benefit of speculators and politically connected intermediaries rather than ordinary CAR citizens.

Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) stated in its report that the opaque nature of the schemes benefited a small circle of insiders and transnational criminal organisations looking for ways to launder money.

“The CAR regime is effectively trading away the country’s sovereignty at the expense of the wider population,” states the report from the Switzerland-based network of some 600 experts tracking international organised crime.

Both these countries were brave, considering that their economies are on the weaker end of the spectrum. Their experiment might have paid dividends if they had sold the assets during historic highs, but these are nations, and not speculating investors or ‘crypto bros’.

For El Salvador, Bitcoin’s volatility created fiscal and reputational risks that brought about a mild U-turn in policy. In CAR, it added more tension and instability to an already fragile economy.

Liquidity shock or structural red flag?

This crash can be seen in two ways, with the simple reading being that it represents the usual cyclical fluctuations of a speculative asset. Bitcoin has encountered this situation many times before, such as the 2018 crash, where prices fell below 80% and caused significant panic, as well as the 2022 crash, which was almost as severe. The pattern remains consistent every time.

“BTC’s well-known four-year cycle may no longer define its long-term behaviour,” Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest, stated in a Fox Business interview in December 2025. Yet, she acknowledged past cycles featured ‘sharp crashes, often 75% to 90%’, now steadied by institutions.

There is euphoria followed by leverage, a macro or idiosyncratic shock, a cascade of forced selling, capitulation, and an eventual recovery to new heights. From this perspective, the recent violent crash is considered routine, and long-term holders who are habituated to these cycles will likely continue to hold while awaiting new horizons.

The second way to look at it is through the structural lens. What has changed since 2018 and 2022?

The major change is that there are new players in the market. First, ETFs now represent a major share of institutional BTC exposure. Additionally, derivative markets are deeper and more interconnected, and leverage in the system is larger in absolute dollar terms, even if the percentage of open interest remains similar.

The digital asset’s price is now heavily conditioned by the same liquidity plumbing that governs equity markets, including ETF flows, repo conditions, and prime brokerage leverage.

It is no longer bound to slow-moving fundamentals like on-chain adoption or long-term holder accumulation. If you look at it like that, the decentralised financial asset is more like a leveraged Nasdaq constituent than a traditional monetary asset that is separate from the financial system. This may not be permanent. Markets can deepen, ownership will broaden, and volatility could decline, which may shift all these correlations in the future. But, as of now, empirically, we understand that BTC isn’t gold.

So the practical takeaway for investors is that the cryptocurrency isn’t a safe haven or a hedge, but a high-beta, liquidity-sensitive position. It’s more like a tech asset than a gold bar.

It still might boom and reach new all-time highs, but it isn’t an asset that’s stable enough to bet on when the world around you is burning down.

For governments and policymakers, the digital currency narrative might be appealing, but lessons from CAR and El Salvador are humbling. The volatility of BTC is treated as a feature of its immaturity, but it is not dependable enough for long-term public policy. Small economies with very limited fiscal space to operate cannot absorb a 50% drawdown. When the banks come knocking, arithmetic prevails over ideology.

It is not to say the digital currency isn’t appealing. It still is, just as it was 10 years ago. There are several factors that remain remarkable, including its supply constraint, an ongoing adoption curve, and a consistent history of full cycles.

But the 2026 crash has an important lesson to teach us. Cryptocurrency as an asset class has not matured like gold. We are, without a doubt, in an early and volatile chapter of the Bitcoin story.

The post Bitcoin crash shatters digital gold myth appeared first on International Finance.

Instead of cutting passenger journeys, the mentioned efficiency measures would be far more effective in ensuring an immediate 11% reduction in carbon footprint by using the most efficient aircraft that airlines already have more strategically on routes they already fly, rather than providing lip service to terms like sustainable fuels or carbon offsets.

The researchers analysed over 27 million commercial flights in 2023, covering 26,000 city pairs and nearly 3.5 billion passengers. The methodology revealed enormous variability in emissions efficiency, with some routes producing nearly 900 grams of CO₂ per kilometre for each paying passenger, almost 30 times higher than the most efficient, at around 30 grams of CO₂ per kilometre. Published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, the study claims to be the first to assess the variation in flights’ operational efficiency around the world.

As aircraft become increasingly fuel-efficient, the amount of carbon dioxide per kilometre flown has been decreasing, but the increase in the number of flights has far outpaced this, leading to higher emissions that are contributing to the climate crisis. Aviation experts predict that by 2050, carbon dioxide emissions from aviation could double or even triple. The new analysis also revealed that more polluting flights were common from smaller airports in the United States and Australia, as well as in parts of Africa and the Middle East. In contrast, airports in India, Brazil, and Southeast Asia were dominated by less polluting flights.

Flights out of airports like Atlanta and New York were among the least efficient, nearly 50% worse than those at the most efficient airports, such as Abu Dhabi and Madrid. The UN aviation body, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), is pinning its hopes on an “unambitious and problematic” offsetting scheme, known as CORSIA, to reduce emissions, but has not yet made any airline purchase a carbon credit.

In fact, Khaled Diab, the communications director at Carbon Market Watch, remarked, “No airline has yet been obliged to use a single carbon credit under the UN’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA). And when they are, CMW research reveals the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) imposes a carbon price on aviation emissions that is 25 times higher. This clearly demonstrates that cap-and-trade systems are better for the climate and should be expanded.”

Prof Stefan Gössling at Linnaeus University in Sweden, who led the research, said, “We are currently stuck with a global situation where there is no hope that aviation will reduce its emissions.”

According to him, all-economy-seat planes, 95% flight occupancy, and using today’s most efficient aircraft could cut fuel use and therefore emissions by 50%-75%. It would also mean far less sustainable fuel would be needed to make flying nearly emissions-free in the future.

“I always thought air transport was already very efficient, and that is also what airlines like to tell people. But, in reality, it’s very inefficient because of three factors: using old aircraft, transporting people [in premium seats] with lots of space, and often having aircraft that are not fully loaded. In 2023, the average ‘load factor’, seat occupancy, was almost 80%,” Gössling added.

Crunching the details

The study also analysed the efficiency of 26,000 pairs of cities based on the amount of CO₂ emitted per kilometre per passenger, using data from 3.5 billion passengers who flew a total distance of 6.8 trillion km (145 trips to the sun, 577 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions, equivalent to the annual emissions of Germany).

The study found that US flights were 14% more polluting than the global average, China had efficiencies slightly above average, and the UK, the third-largest aviation polluter in the world, had efficiencies slightly below the 84.4g of CO₂ per passenger kilometre average.

The most efficient route was Milan, Italy, to Incheon Airport near Seoul, South Korea (31.6g CO₂/pkm). The least efficient route was in Papua New Guinea, with the second-worst from Ironwood Airport to Minneapolis/St Paul in the US (805g CO₂/pkm).

“While airlines often claim that fuel savings are in their own economic interest, the reality is that many airlines continue to fly with old aircraft, low load factors, or growing shares of premium-class seating,” the researchers noted.

“The most important factor was replacing premium seats with denser economy seating: First- and business-class passengers are responsible for more than three times the emissions of economy passengers, and up to 13 times more in the biggest premium cabins. Other policies that might encourage greater efficiency include softer policies like requiring airlines to disclose an efficiency rating for each route. You wouldn’t want to fly with an airline that is rated F. Market-based policies might include airports charging higher landing fees for more polluting aircraft, which also makes local communities’ air dirtier,” Gössling claimed.

While the efficiency gains that the study identified, such as replacing older, more polluting planes, would bring improvements, they would also confront the reality of an industry operating on low margins. However, Gössling argued that the sector was stuck in a business model that maximised passenger numbers to boost profit and that it could operate fewer, fuller flights with higher ticket prices.

He said that many flights are taken because they are so cheap, commenting, “We know that a lot of air transport demand is induced. If you increase the cost, people will just choose a different type of holiday.”

Facing the reality

The senior vice-president of sustainability at the International Air Transport Association, the trade association for the world’s airlines, Marie Owens Thomsen, told Reuters, “Airlines have a vested interest in reducing fuel burn and maximising load factors, but the order backlog for aircraft exceeds 5,000 planes due to supply-chain failures.”

She further added that real progress in reducing aviation emissions would come from the use of SAF, CORSIA, and the modernisation of air routes.

Aviation accounts for 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Still, flying is concentrated among wealthy passengers, with 1% of the world’s population responsible for 50% of aviation emissions, while only 10% of people fly at all in any one year, and 4% fly abroad.

An ICAO spokesperson said its analysis showed that operational improvements could account for 4%-11% of the carbon emission reductions required to achieve net zero, while factors such as cleaner fuel and innovative technologies will do the remainder.

Meanwhile, with the aviation sector racing to decarbonise, how much might the cost of a passenger ticket increase by 2050? Naomi Allen, Head of Research at RAeS (Royal Aeronautical Society), crunched the numbers to find out the reality.

Decarbonising aviation will make the sector more expensive and, therefore, ticket prices will rise, making flights less accessible to passengers. Assuming that 25% of the ticket cost is for fuel, by 2050, the industry will face another dilemma, like fuel cost, including the real value (CAF or SAF), along with the penalties due to non-compliance with the mandate and the cost of GGR (Greenhouse Gas Removal) for any remaining carbon emissions.

On the other hand, the University of Oxford report assumes that fuel (kerosene and SAF) costs and GGR costs are evenly distributed across tickets and are agnostic as to which flights use SAF or not. While the United Kingdom’s SAF mandate does not yet specify requirements for 2050, according to Allen, the industry has assumed that the requirement will be 70% of fuel being SAF, the same as the ReFuelEU mandate requirement.

“The average ERF of the SAF used is assumed to be 70%; this may be an underestimate for PtL SAF by 2050, but it is higher than the ERF typically seen for many other types of SAF at the current time. Assuming Net Zero for the sector in 2050, all net carbon emissions resulting from the fuel outside the mandate and the ERF of the SAF will have to be offset by GGR,” Allen told The Guardian.

The study also ignores inflation between now and 2050, assuming that the price of fossil-fuel-derived kerosene in 2050 will be $700/ton, although the actual price will depend on the pace of decarbonisation in other sectors. The report assumes that the supply of SAF is sufficient to meet demand up to the level of the SAF mandate and that the supply of GGR is unlimited. In reality, SAF and GGR may not be available to the aviation sector in the necessary quantities, as there will be competition for resources between other sectors and scaling constraints.

Greenhouse gas removals by 2050 are expected to be permanent. However, the estimated costs for these removals vary significantly. The World Economic Forum has stated that achieving a Direct Air Capture (DAC) cost of $150 per ton of CO₂ by 2050 is both necessary and feasible. In contrast, the recently published Independent Review of Greenhouse Gas Removals for the British government predicts that the costs for permanent removals in 2050 will be much higher. For the study, GGR prices of $100/ton and $600/ton are used; a midpoint of $350/ton CO₂ is used to capture the probable range due to alternative GGR methods and processes, and significant uncertainty. A midpoint of $350/ton CO₂ is used for some calculations.

It is anticipated that all decarbonisation will come from SAF and GGR, and that other decarbonisation options, such as electrification and hydrogen, will not have a significant impact on aviation emissions (either due to scalability or technology/infrastructure maturity) by 2050. Costs will be affected differently by other decarbonisation strategies. Moreover, the research found that, provided the price of SAF is about as expected or lower, and the cost of GGR is high, then meeting the SAF mandate will, on average, result in lower ticket prices than if Net Zero is achieved entirely through GGR.

On the other hand, if lower GGR costs are achieved, then meeting the SAF mandate is likely to raise ticket prices by 10%-15%. Note that this assumes that enough SAF will be available to meet the mandate, but it was also calculated that if the SAF mandate is not met, then non-compliance penalties could raise ticket prices by as much as 15% more, depending on the extent of the excess demand. The scenario is plausible, given doubts about the ability to scale up the supply of SAF.

The post Is cleaner aviation within reach? appeared first on International Finance.

As a result, if you weren’t savvy and didn’t put in a considerable amount of footwork, you consistently overpaid on your down payments. Studies reveal that before Zillow’s data democratisation, an investor paid 2%-5% as an ignorance tax. If you were from out of town, you paid an additional 2%. The informed buyer who uses an app like Zillow saves 4.75% on their payments.

The author of Freakonomics, Steven Levitt, examined the selling habits of real estate agents when it came to their own homes and found that they kept their properties on the market around 10 days longer and sold them for roughly 3% higher than those of their clients. This is not a trivial sum. To put things into context, the 5% overpayment is approximately $20,500 to $25,650 for the average American homebuyer. That can get you a brand new Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla, a full kitchen renovation, or the entire down payment for a first-time buyer. Zillow is a revolution in the real estate industry. It is a boon to the buyer, saving American homeowners $750 billion in aggregate since 2010.

When Jeremy Wacksman took the helm as Zillow’s CEO in late 2024, the company had just shuttered its ambitious home-flipping venture, Zillow Offers, after some spectacular miscalculations, leaving it holding properties it had overpaid for. Wall Street was sceptical. Agents were wary. Competitors were circling. Jeremy Wacksman proved the doubters wrong as Zillow made a miraculous comeback with mid-teens revenue growth, which got investors cheering.

In a letter to shareholders, Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman and CFO Jeremy Hofmann wrote, “Our consistently strong performance reinforces that Zillow can grow regardless of what the residential real estate market is doing,” proving that Zillow has decoupled itself from the fate of interest rates and will continue to grow irrespective of the number of homebuyers.

Jeremy Wacksman’s vision is transforming Zillow into what he calls a “housing super app,” a one-stop digital ecosystem that touches every step of buying or selling a home.

What exactly is PropTech, anyway?

Before we deep dive into Zillow and its software-realty revolution, let’s look at the industry it operates in. Zillow can be classified as what economists and technologists call PropTech, just short for property technology. The company uses information technology and digital platforms to give you, the consumer, insights into the real estate market, which is traditionally known for its opacity. Think of it as everything that happens when Silicon Valley meets the housing market.

Even though the global real estate market is valued at hundreds of trillions, the technology that services it is in its adolescence, with annual revenues at around $35 to $45 billion and growing at roughly 12%-16% (in places like Bangkok and Manila, that rate is much higher at 19%). Among global giants like China and Europe, the US dominates PropTech, holding 35%-45% (approximately $12 billion to $16 billion) of the global market. The reason for that is companies like Zillow, CoStar, and Procore. America has a unique combination of standardised data (MLS), high transaction volume, and a tech-centric culture that encourages digital adoption.

Zillow doesn’t control the housing market, but it is definitely in charge of the digital front door of the real estate business. It generated a revenue of $2.5 billion in 2025 and has a massive 15%-20% of the American PropTech market share. Over 60% of Americans who use their mobiles to browse real estate do so through Zillow, and in the residential sector, Zillow is the de facto search engine. It’s Google for home buyers. While they only capture a small slice of the commission dollars (via agent fees), they control the flow of customers.

And why is this happening? It’s because of three major technological shifts. For starters, generative AI is no longer about experimental chatbots and is adept at statistical analysis and can accurately predict which homeowners will sell their property. Artificial intelligence (AI) also performs exceptionally well in automated mortgage underwriting (which improves liquidity by reducing underwriting time from weeks to days), and writes listing descriptions tailored to each customer and with better precision than most human agents.

Then there are immersive technologies like virtual tours and 3D walkthroughs, which help you visualise and feel which home is right for you. Finally, sustainability tech has emerged as a serious value driver, especially in Europe, where buildings are increasingly valued based on their energy efficiency and carbon footprint.

What makes PropTech fascinating is that it varies significantly by location. In Southeast Asia, it’s about managing rapid urbanisation through state-level infrastructure; think government platforms that coordinate transit systems with residential development. In Europe, it’s driven by sustainability regulations, with digital twins of buildings used primarily for energy optimisation and compliance.

American PropTech solves a uniquely American problem. Companies like Zillow have figured out how to bring efficiency and transparency to a fragmented market dominated by 1.5 million independent agents and a patchwork of local Multiple Listing Services.

The story of Zillow

Zillow, an idea thought up by Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, was launched in 2004. What’s interesting is that both these men were former Microsoft employees who launched Expedia in the 1990s. It’s interesting because Expedia was a web portal that freed information from travel agents and ensured that ticketing and hotel prices were transparent. It was a data democratisation company that disrupted travel. All Barton and Frink did was to apply the successful techniques they used in the travel industry to disrupt the real estate industry. The duo were about to revolutionise real estate by making all home values public.

At the time, this was a radical move. Real estate data was locked away behind agent gates, and if you wanted to know what your neighbour’s house sold for or what your own home might be worth, you had to call a real estate agent and hope they’d share that information. Zillow’s “Zestimate” (an algorithmic home valuation tool) changed everything. Suddenly, anyone with an internet connection could get an instant estimate of any property’s value. The industry opposed it, with agents concerned about job security and critics lamenting inaccuracies in price. However, consumers loved it. Within a few years, Zillow had become the most visited real estate website in America, attracting millions of people who were curious about home values, not necessarily looking to buy or sell.

For years, Zillow operated as what insiders call a “media portal.” It made money by selling advertising and leads to real estate agents through its Premier Agent programme. Think of it as the Google of real estate, a place where buyers started their search, but where the actual transaction happened elsewhere, facilitated by traditional agents and lenders.

Then came the iBuying era. Flush with investor confidence and inspired by the success of companies that were “disrupting” traditional industries, Zillow launched Zillow Offers in 2018. The concept was a simple one. We will use data and algorithms to buy homes directly from sellers, make light renovations, and resell them at a profit. You cut the middleman off and inefficiencies of the traditional market, and capture more of the transactional value. It made absolute sense and was a bold move, championed by Barton, who returned as CEO in 2019 to steer the ship through this “Moonshot.”

However, the algorithms miscalculated. The company overpaid for properties just as the market softened. By November 2021, the real estate market had become erratic, COVID-19 had hit, and home price appreciation was behaving unpredictably. Zillow’s algorithms, designed to forecast prices, struggled to keep up with the wild swings of a market influenced by a pandemic, inflation, and supply chain shocks. A simultaneous labour shortage and supply chain crisis meant that Zillow could not renovate and flip homes fast enough. The company discovered a backlog of inventory it could not clear, comprising thousands of homes that were depreciating each passing day. In the third quarter of 2021 alone, the Zillow Offers segment posted a staggering loss of $339.2 million, necessitating a write-down of over $540 million. Zillow Offers shut down, and a quarter of Zillow’s employees paid the price with unemployment. A truly humbling moment for a company that had spent years positioning itself as the smart data-driven disruptor.

Innovation of the Housing Super App

Instead of doubling down on Zillow Offers, caught in a vicious sunk cost fallacy, Zillow shut down the venture. The brilliance of this move became apparent in the years that followed. By exiting the capital-intensive, low-margin business of house flipping, Zillow was able to pivot back to its core strengths of audience, data, and software. This strategic retreat gave birth to the “Housing Super App” strategy, the engine driving Zillow’s success in 2025. So, the whole Super App vision is really about playing the role of the conductor in a real estate orchestra. It’s managing the transaction from start to finish without actually owning any of the assets involved. It integrates buying, selling, renting, and financing into a seamless, all-in-one digital experience. Zillow profits at each stage, avoiding the headaches and risks associated with holding inventory.

Jeremy Wacksman was the one who made this vision a reality. He was the COO right in the thick of that big pivot, and then he stepped up to CEO in August 2024. Under his guidance, this Super App approach has completely revamped Zillow’s financial picture.

The company shifted its focus to “Enhanced Markets,” cities like Phoenix and Atlanta, where it deployed a full suite of integrated services. The results have been spectacular. In these markets, customer transaction share has increased by over 80% since 2022. By early 2025, Zillow had expanded its Enhanced Market footprint to cover 21% of its connections, with a clear path to 35% by year-end and a long-term goal of 75%.

This pivot restored Zillow’s profitability and financial health. In 2024 and 2025, the company maintained gross margins above 75%, a figure characteristic of elite software firms rather than the slim margins of the construction industry. It’s quite impressive how this company managed to make a major comeback. They achieved positive GAAP net income in Q1 2025, and projections indicate they will remain profitable throughout the entire fiscal year. This marks a significant shift from the substantial losses they experienced back in 2021. Their balance sheet? It’s like a fortress now, sitting on $1.6 billion in cash and investments as of early 2025. That level of liquidity allows them to invest in innovation and weather any economic challenges that may arise.

Zillow owes this turnaround to Jeremy Wacksman’s leadership. As a former engineer at Xbox (another Microsoft subsidiary), he was well versed in that sharp, product-focused discipline. And he brought that over to the C-suite. His intellectual curiosity and willingness to admit ignorance when he did not know something were conducive to a team-based problem-solving approach crucial to tackle the crisis at hand. He took this fuzzy idea of a “Super App” and turned it into real, tangible products like Zillow Rentals, Zillow Home Loans, and the agent-facing Zillow Pro. Just look at Rentals now. It grew revenue by 33% year-over-year in Q1 2025, and aims for a $500 million run rate.

Sure, detractors love to bring up the flop of Zillow Offers as some kind of permanent stain, but by 2025, industry folks see it as a “clarifying moment” that actually highlighted the company’s resilience. It eliminated a distracting business model and encouraged everyone to focus on digital integration. The Zillow that emerged from that 2021 situation is leaner, more focused, and much more scalable. They realised their real strength isn’t in owning actual homes, but in owning the digital backbone that makes homeownership happen. That lesson, earned the hard way, is what’s driving all this optimism now. It’s shifting their strategy away from betting on market prices and toward capitalising on the efficiencies they build.

The future of home sales

In 2025, Zillow really dug in this massive technological moat that’s so deep and wide, it’s struggling to seize its market share. They’ve ditched the old-school world of flat 2D photos and scattered data bits, and stepped right into the era of the “Digital Twin.” We are talking about the super immersive, data-packed virtual copy of a home. It’s not just for show, and this tech jump is what makes remote deals possible and sets Zillow miles apart from everyone else.

The star of their tech lineup is “SkyTour,” which they launched in July 2025 just for “Showcase” listings. SkyTour, a breakthrough in computer vision, is powered by this rendering method called “Gaussian Splatting.” Instead of those clunky traditional 3D models with meshes of triangles, it uses millions of “splats,” which are these ellipsoidal bits that nail complex surfaces and lighting with spot-on photorealism. This stuff was once only for fancy movie effects and games, but now it lets you “fly” around a property on your phone, checking out the roof, backyard, and whole neighbourhood like you’re piloting a drone.

The engineering feat behind SkyTour is huge. Scientists like Will Hutchcroft and executives like Steve Anderson, who headed the Zillow crew, figured out how to tweak this heavy-duty process so it runs butter-smooth on regular web browsers and smartphones. It’s basically made high-fidelity spatial data accessible to everyone, and that shifts how people think about house hunting. It gives buyers that “being there” vibe that plain pics can’t touch, cutting down on in-person visits and speeding up decisions. The numbers back it up. Showcase listings with SkyTour pull in 79% more page views, 76% more saves, and 91% more shares than comparable non-Showcase ones. This initiates a positive cycle where sellers are eager to utilise Zillow’s premium marketing tools, generating additional revenue and enhancing the platform.

But killer visuals are just one piece of Zillow’s 2025 tech puzzle. They’ve gone all-in on weaving AI into the money and search sides of things, too. Take the “BuyAbility” tool. They have nailed it in 2025, and it hits right at the biggest worry for today’s homebuyers: Can I afford this? Old mortgage calculators are rigid and often off-base, ignoring how credit scores, debt-to-income ratios, and changing interest rates all mix together. BuyAbility? It’s live and adaptive. It retrieves real-time mortgage rates customised for your location and credit profile, producing a personalised “purchasing power” score that updates daily.

As rates bounce around in the wild 2025 economy, your BuyAbility score updates on the spot. When you’re scrolling the Zillow map, homes get marked as “Within BuyAbility,” so you can ditch the ones that are a financial stretch and zero in on real options. But it doesn’t stop at crunching numbers. It breaks down how boosting your credit or increasing your down payment tweaks your power, turning you into your personal digital money coach. And by baking Zillow Home Loans right in, they snag you when you’re most ready, making the jump from looking to locking in financing seamless.

On top of that, Zillow flipped the search game with Generative AI. They hooked up a ChatGPT plugin and natural language smarts, so you can do full-on conversational searches. No more fiddling with a ton of filters. Just type something like, “Find me a three-bedroom house in Austin with a big backyard under $500k that’s near good schools.” The AI gets the subtleties and serves up tailored results. This technology also enhances the agent tools. Through the “Zillow Pro” suite, AI analyses user habits to provide agents with “smart lists” and recommended actions. If a buyer keeps eyeing a listing or shares it with someone, the AI pings the agent to follow up, cranking up how well leads turn into deals.

What’s next for Zillow?

As Zillow looks toward 2030, its vision extends beyond profits to stewardship of the housing ecosystem. Through its Super App, the company wields technology for social good, exemplified by the Housing Connector partnership. Since 2019, this initiative has housed over 10,000 homeless individuals by linking case managers with flexible landlords, turning Zillow’s database into a lifeline. Plans aim for 30,000 more placements, proving data can solve systemic crises.

By 2030, the Super App may become the “One-Click Home,” integrating title, escrow, and insurance for seamless transactions, targeting 45% EBITDA margins.

The efficiencies of PropTech are saving tens of thousands of dollars for families at a time when housing prices are near inaccessible for most Americans. Zillow is bringing the American Dream, of which owning one’s own home is a major symbol, closer to every family. It will be a steady and slow process, with Wacksman proclaiming, “Affordability conditions are projected to improve… but it should be a gradual recovery and a year of ‘small wins’.”

In triumph, Zillow has overcome its iBuying woes, forging resilient software and partnerships. Spanning from the 2006 server crashes to the AI immersion of 2025, it empowers consumers, emerging as the optimistic, accessible, and enduring cornerstone of the digital infrastructure for the American Dream.

The post Zillow rewrites the American Dream appeared first on International Finance.

The region’s unique position is also a draw as the GCC offers a middle-ground risk and return profile standing between the low-risk, low-yield markets of the West and the higher-risk, high-yield opportunities in the East.

Maturing markets reduce risk

Industry experts observe that the GCC’s political and economic environment has stabilised significantly in recent years. Hugh Morris, Senior Research Partner at the consultancy Z/Yen, explains that as the market matures, perceptions of geopolitical risk in the region have improved. A more stable environment has, in turn, enabled a growing pipeline of infrastructure projects.

With risks now seen as lower, more investors are willing to compete for opportunities in the Gulf than ever before. In a global investment climate where low-risk assets with decent yields are scarce, the GCC’s balanced risk-reward profile is especially compelling to international financiers.

This improved climate has paved the way for greater collaboration among lenders. International banks, armed with large pools of capital and expertise in complex project financing, are increasingly partnering with local GCC banks that have invaluable on-the-ground knowledge and relationships.

Together, these partnerships blend global financial power with local insight to ensure projects are funded and executed effectively. These synergies help major developments get off the ground, as each party brings complementary strengths to the table.

Even with these positive trends, project finance deals are not without challenges. Many projects span 20 or more years, with loan repayment schedules commonly stretching over 12 to 25 years. Critically, loans are usually repaid from the project’s own revenues once it is operational, as sponsors do not typically guarantee the debt.

This structure means lenders shoulder significant risk, since repayment hinges entirely on the project’s success. Naturally, banks expect to earn a premium interest rate in return for taking on this risk. However, competition in today’s market is pushing lenders to offer more attractive terms to win business, even as they must adhere to strict capital adequacy rules. Balancing risk-based pricing with competitive financing packages has become a key focus for Gulf banks.

Diversification drives mega-projects

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) currently lead the region in large-scale project investments. A major driver behind this trend is the strategic push to diversify national economies away from oil and gas, building a sustainable post-oil future. Both countries benefit from centralised decision-making as directives from top leadership translate swiftly into infrastructure initiatives on the ground. For example, Saudi Arabia has embarked on pioneering projects in green hydrogen energy, and the UAE has made a bold entry into nuclear power. Saudi Arabia’s $50 billion Al Diriyah development near Riyadh aims to create a cultural and tourist hub, echoing Dubai’s success in drawing international visitors.

Despite this ambitious pipeline, not everything is rosy. A spokesperson for Bank ABC points out that there remains an estimated $5 trillion annual investment gap globally for clean energy, highlighting shortcomings in meeting climate targets after COP29.

The bank argues that financial institutions must play a greater leadership role in bridging this gap. This reality highlights why so many Gulf-based banks and investors are concentrating their efforts on funding renewable energy and other energy-transition projects.

Rise of social infrastructure

Another notable shift in the Gulf’s project finance landscape is the growth of social infrastructure projects such as hospitals, schools, and public amenities, which are often structured as public-private partnerships (PPPs). Ehab Nassar, a director at Fitch Ratings, observes that this trend is driven by the same strategy of reducing reliance on oil revenues.

Governments in the GCC have been ramping up PPP frameworks to tap private-sector capital and expertise for public projects. Until the late 2010s, true project finance deals outside the oil and gas sector were relatively limited. Since then, countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have introduced formal PPP programmes as part of their economic diversification agendas.

Not every major project in the region uses a PPP structure. For instance, Abu Dhabi’s Barakah nuclear power plant is a cornerstone of the UAE’s clean energy strategy. It was financed through a more traditional mix of government support and international investment rather than a typical PPP, combining debt and equity in its funding.

It was backed by over $18 billion in loans from the Abu Dhabi government and international lenders (including KEXIM), plus an equity investment of $4.7 billion from a joint venture between Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) and Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO).

Because the plant will help decarbonise the UAE’s power grid, the authorities classified its financing as a green loan, emphasising its contribution to the country’s green economy goals. In July 2023, once the plant was operational, two major Emirati lenders, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and First Abu Dhabi Bank, stepped in to refinance a large portion of the project’s debt, taking over the loan facilities that KEXIM had initially provided.

Innovative financing structures

Project financiers in the GCC are also experimenting with new deal structures to improve funding efficiency. One notable evolution, highlighted by Abbas Husain of Standard Chartered, is the use of “hard mini-perm” financing coupled with long-term off-take agreements.

In these arrangements, a project’s initial bank loan might have a shorter tenor, effectively requiring refinancing after a few years, while the project itself benefits from a long-term concession or purchase contract.

This approach shifts much of the refinancing risk to the off-taker and offers two key benefits. There are lower initial financing costs and greater liquidity from banks to kick-start construction. Such projects often plan to refinance later by issuing project bonds or securing longer-term commercial loans once the development is operational.

For infrastructure projects where the off-taker does not shoulder refinancing risk, developers typically secure long-term bank loans up front. Export credit agency (ECA) financing and other government-backed loans remain crucial in these cases, providing stability with low interest rates over long tenors and often coming with guarantees or insurance that enhance the project’s credit profile. By boosting the project’s credit quality in this way, such support makes it more attractive to a broader range of investors.

Refinancing for cost optimisation

Once projects are up and running, many Gulf sponsors seek to refinance their debt on better terms. According to Mazen Singer, a partner in infrastructure finance at PwC Middle East, most project owners look to refinance about five to eight years after a project becomes operational. By that stage, construction is complete, operations have stabilised, and revenue streams are more predictable.

The project’s risk profile improves significantly. Refinancing at this point can lower the overall cost of capital and optimise the debt structure. In some cases, it even allows sponsors to free up capital for new developments. If one waits much longer, those advantages diminish, and once a loan’s remaining term becomes short, the potential savings from refinancing are far more limited.

The pool of financiers and investors has also widened as the GCC market matures. Singer notes that more export credit agencies are now involved in Gulf projects. In addition, specialised infrastructure funds are drawn to mature, cash-generating (brownfield) assets, and local capital markets are growing more open to project bond issuances.

Husain of Standard Chartered adds that improved regulatory and governance frameworks, clearer procurement processes, and high-calibre project sponsors have made banks much more comfortable with regional project risks.

Strong sovereign support underpins many deals, and often the off-taker is a state-owned utility or the obligation is backed by a government ministry. This backing substantially reduces perceived credit risk and has enabled banks to offer financing at more competitive rates than in the past.

Thanks to an expanding track record of completed projects, investors now see a pipeline of successful ventures in the GCC, which builds confidence that each new project is a sound investment. These successes, and the collaborative financing behind them, demonstrate the Gulf governments’ determination to construct a prosperous post-oil future.

However, industry veterans caution that financial discipline is still needed. Hugh Morris cautions that regulators must prevent investors from over-leveraging projects and taking excessive returns, as such practices could undermine long-term infrastructure sustainability.

The future of project financing

While progress in Gulf project finance has been impressive, experts note certain challenges remain. One issue is the lack of historical precedent in the region for some project finance scenarios, which breeds uncertainty for lenders. For example, there is still little proven case law on how readily lenders can enforce their security interests if a project runs into trouble.

Another concern is limited transparency and information sharing, which makes it harder for outside investors to gauge project risks. All of these gaps point to the need for stronger legal and regulatory frameworks across the GCC to reduce uncertainty and build long-term confidence. Notably, regulatory development is not uniform across the bloc. The UAE and Saudi Arabia boast the most advanced frameworks and capital markets, while smaller economies are still catching up.

Industry analysts suggest several steps that could further strengthen the Gulf’s project finance ecosystem. One suggestion is the standardisation of PPP frameworks. Uniform PPP laws and contracts across the region would make projects more bankable and attract international lenders. Another idea is to develop secondary markets.

An active trading of infrastructure debt and equity would facilitate refinancing and let banks recycle capital into new projects. Finally, there is a shifting refinancing risk to off-takers. If utilities (project off-takers) bear future refinancing obligations, initial lenders can free up capacity, boosting liquidity for new projects.

With ongoing regulatory advancements and collaboration among stakeholders, the GCC is positioned to become a leader in the next phase of global infrastructure finance. However, sustaining this momentum will require more than just money. It also calls for developing human capital.

Analysts like Mazen Singer emphasise the importance of cultivating local expertise and institutional capacity in project finance. By training professionals and nurturing national champions in the industry, Gulf countries can ensure that the ambitious projects of today lead to a lasting legacy of knowledge and prosperity.

The post The Gulf’s new capital play appeared first on International Finance.

Not long ago, companies barely considered “misinformation campaigns” a serious threat. The odds of a viral falsehood causing lasting damage seemed near zero. That complacency is now gone. Today, a single lie gaining traction online can indeed send a company’s stock plummeting overnight.

All it takes is a critical mass of people believing a false claim. Say that a product is unsafe, made unethically, shoddy in quality, or linked to an extremist cause, and a customer boycott can erupt, wreaking havoc on the brand.

The World Economic Forum’s latest Global Risks Report emphasises the seriousness of this threat. It flags government-led misinformation and disinformation as a top short-term risk that can sow instability and erode trust in authority. Just as worrying, the report warns, is the potential impact on business.

Entire industries could see growth and sales stifled by waves of misleading narratives. This is especially true for sectors like biotechnology, where self-styled “biohackers” and other unqualified influencers tout unproven health remedies while disparaging effective, regulated treatments.

There’s also a geopolitical dimension. Some governments are now aggressively spreading falsehoods about products from rival countries. By poisoning public perception of a competitor’s goods, such state-sponsored lies can spark consumer boycotts. It’s a dangerous escalation amid today’s trade wars. The emergence of artificial intelligence could exacerbate the situation.

Many AI-driven social media algorithms are programmed to maximise engagement by elevating trending posts and unintentionally turbocharging sensational falsehoods over accurate news. In other words, the very platforms companies rely on for marketing can become the channels that amplify lies about them.

Companies also have limited legal recourse when misinformation strikes. There is often no simple way to stop those who sow lies online, and court remedies are notoriously difficult. In the United States, for example, internet platforms enjoy broad immunity from liability for user-posted content under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

That law also shields websites that make good-faith efforts to moderate harmful content. Meanwhile, suing the originator of a damaging falsehood for defamation is usually a long shot and prohibitively expensive. It’s a gamble few organisations can afford.

When falsehoods become weapons

Not all misinformation is accidental or spread by misinformed individuals. In some cases, it’s a deliberate act of sabotage against a company.

During an interaction with World Finance, Ant Moore, a senior managing director in strategic communications at consultancy FTI Consulting, said, “At its worst, deliberate deception has the potential to destabilise or create severe financial and reputational damage.”

Moore explains that while everyday misinformation might start with someone innocently sharing a doctored photo or a counterfeit audio clip, thinking it’s real, true disinformation involves conscious intent.

It’s the difference between a rumour gone wrong and a coordinated lie launched specifically to hurt a target. In all cases, Moore notes, society’s ability to discern fake content hasn’t caught up to the sophistication of today’s forgeries.

There are many ways in which malicious misinformation can threaten a company’s well-being. For example, consumer boycotts and lost sales are extremely detrimental. False claims about a company’s products or practices can spark outrage and mass boycotts, causing an immediate hit to revenue.

There is the erosion of brand trust to worry about. Once a damaging narrative takes hold, public perception can sour quickly. Customers may lose faith in the brand, even if the story is later debunked, leading to long-term reputation harm.

Sometimes investors panic, and shareholders might dump the stock if they believe the negative buzz, driving the share price down and alarming the market. Also, workforce morale issues could disengage employees, and they might even quit if bombarded with false stories painting their employer as unethical. The company’s internal culture and productivity may suffer as a consequence.

Finally, baseless but high-profile allegations can trigger investigations or demands for answers from regulators or politicians, forcing the company to spend time and resources addressing a non-issue.

Real-world incidents illustrate how quickly a lie can erupt into a corporate crisis. In 2016, athletic brand New Balance faced a social media firestorm over false claims that it was aligned with far-right politics. In 2022, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly watched its stock price tumble by over 4% in a single day after a fake Twitter account impersonating the company announced that insulin would be given away for free (given insulin’s high cost to patients at the time).

And in 2023, Bud Light, America’s top-selling beer, saw sales plunge roughly 25% after a social media frenzy turned a promotional tie-in with a transgender influencer into a full-blown conservative boycott. The beer’s parent company blamed misinformation online for stoking the backlash. These cases highlight how falsehoods can lead to significant financial harm for businesses, whether spread intentionally or unintentionally.

Exploitable info landscape

According to communications experts, the only surprise is that more companies haven’t been blindsided sooner. Businesses today operate in an information environment that Chris Clarke, co-founder of agency Fire on the Hill, describes as “increasingly complex and globally connected.”

New forms of digital media emerge constantly, and information now moves across the world in an instant. Controlling its flow is next to impossible.

“In the current environment, which is chaotic, fragmented and lacking in trust, the ground is fertile for misinformation to go viral,” Clarke said.

Bad actors are quick to exploit this chaos. Foreign adversaries, ideological agitators, or even unscrupulous competitors or others might weaponise false stories to hurt a business. Companies must assume they will be targeted eventually and plan accordingly, making the fight against misinformation a top corporate priority rather than an afterthought.

Early detection and response

When false stories can be fabricated with a few clicks and broadcast worldwide within minutes, speed is of the essence. Companies must learn to spot and counter malicious narratives in real time before they spiral out of control. The challenge, however, is knowing where to look. Rebecca Jones, associate director at business intelligence firm Sibylline, points out that many communications and PR teams still focus on tracking the major social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, or TikTok for mentions of their brand.

“However, that is not where these disinformation campaigns begin, and arguably, by the time disinformation hits these sites, the issue has already gone viral and you are in crisis,” Jones explains.

In other words, by the time a lie about your company is trending on Twitter or being shared widely on Facebook, it’s probably too late to contain it.

According to Jones, harmful rumours more often germinate in the internet’s shadows on alternative social sites and fringe forums where sensational claims find a receptive audience. A conspiracy theory or fabricated story might simmer in those corners, quietly gathering momentum over time, before jumping to mainstream platforms and exploding into public view. For companies, keeping an eye on these lesser-known channels can be a game-changer.

If you can catch wind of a false narrative early, you might not be able to stop it entirely, but you can at least prepare.

“Even if it can’t be stopped, hopefully, such an early warning mechanism enables teams to have a plan of action in place for when it does hit the mainstream. As your executives are prepped, the press team is ready to respond, and perhaps you have even taken steps to pre-bunk the story,” Jones noted.

In fact, some businesses are now practising “pre-bunking”, which is pre-emptively debunking a looming false claim by releasing correct information or context before the lie goes viral. Another crucial defensive strategy is to proactively control the narrative about your own company.

“Facts are more impressive than fiction,” says Chris Walker, managing director of consultancy “Be The Best Communications.”

He advises organisations to compile clear evidence that disproves the false claim and to showcase the company’s genuine commitment to doing the right thing.

By quickly sharing factual proof, a company can undermine a rumour’s credibility and reassure the public. Walker also suggests directly challenging the source of the fake news and demanding that they show proof for their sensational claim. Often those spreading a lie can’t back it up, and if pressed to “put up,” they’ll likely have to “shut up.” Building trust through direct communication channels is also increasingly important.

Alice Regester, co-founder and CEO at communications agency 33Seconds, emphasises that companies should use their owned media, such as official websites, blogs, and verified social media accounts, to set the record straight quickly.

By consistently putting out accurate information on these channels, a company builds a reputation as a trusted source. Then, when a crisis hits, consumers know they can check the official company outlets for the truth instead of relying on hearsay. In short, the faster and more credibly a company can present its side of the story, the better its chance to blunt the impact of a falsehood.

Collaborate and amplify

Defending against misinformation is not a battle to fight alone. Companies can benefit from cultivating third-party champions, loyal customers, industry experts, and consumer advocates who will publicly counter false claims.

When a false narrative emerges, these outside voices help amplify the truth. Partnering with independent fact-checkers or giving credible media outlets evidence to debunk rumours can further extend the reach of a company’s rebuttal.

Another effective strategy is to build an influencer and fan community that will rally to the company’s defence.

Adam Blacker, PR director at HostingAdvice.com, said, “It is really hard to do everything yourself. You need to build a strong community of fans who love and support your brand. They, in turn, become brand ambassadors.”

These brand advocates can often counteract falsehoods faster and more credibly than any official corporate statement. Their genuine enthusiasm for the brand helps sway public sentiment in the company’s favour.

In tandem with human allies, companies are also turning to technology for an early warning. Social listening software that continuously scans social media and online forums for mentions of a company or relevant keywords is becoming indispensable. By analysing conversations in real time, these tools alert teams to unusual spikes or trending topics, giving them a chance to verify alarming claims before they hit the mainstream.

Catching a lie at the rumour stage (or at least early in its spread) means having a chance to intervene with correct information or prepare a measured response, rather than scrambling after the falsehood has already exploded.

Even with all these measures, experts say organisations should shift from a reactive stance to a proactive defence posture. Andy Grayland, Chief Information Security Officer at threat intelligence firm Silobreaker, argues that cyber threat intelligence (CTI) solutions can serve as a crucial radar system for spotting disinformation campaigns.

These advanced tools monitor a broad range of open sources from news sites and social networks to niche blogs, forums, and even parts of the deep web, looking for early indicators of threats to a company’s brand or interests. The moment something suspicious involving the company starts bubbling up, CTI systems can raise an alert.

Grayland notes that AI-powered intelligence platforms are increasingly essential for cutting through the noise of the internet and pinpointing real risks. They can also highlight patterns that suggest a coordinated effort to spread falsehoods. For instance, if an anti-vaccine group that typically mentions a particular pharmaceutical brand around 50 times a day suddenly ramps up to 500 mentions, a CTI platform would immediately flag the surge as suspicious.

Armed with that knowledge, the company can quickly decide how to respond, whether by engaging with facts, informing authorities, or bracing for impact.

Early detection translates into real business value. Companies that gain real-time visibility into brewing falsehoods have a chance to head off financial losses, prevent full-blown reputational crises, and stay ahead of any regulatory or shareholder fallout. In an age where lies can go viral in an instant, having this kind of rapid radar and response capability safeguards not just a company’s reputation but its bottom line as well.

Misinformation and its more deliberate counterpart, disinformation, are not new. Rumours and hoaxes have troubled businesses for ages. However, in the digital age, social media and AI have accelerated the speed and reach of this threat. A lie that once spread slowly via word of mouth can now hit millions within hours, making viral falsehoods a far more potent danger to companies than ever before.

For companies, it’s no longer a question of if they will face a misinformation attack, but when. In this high-stakes environment, preparation is everything. By investing in early warning systems, building trust with stakeholders, and crafting rapid-response plans, businesses put themselves in a far stronger position to weather a misinformation storm.

When a false narrative hits, a prepared organisation can respond swiftly with facts, rally supportive voices, and contain the damage. Combating viral falsehoods has essentially become part of the cost of doing business, and those that respond decisively are the ones most likely to protect their reputation and bottom line.

Misinformation has evolved from an inconvenient distraction into a systemic corporate threat. Companies that once treated false narratives as isolated crises must now recognise them as recurring hazards that can erode trust, market value, and even long-term viability.

What makes the challenge more dangerous today is speed, as falsehoods can achieve global reach in minutes, amplified by algorithms, bots, and coordinated campaigns. In this environment, silence or delayed responses are no longer neutral options. They are liabilities.

The lesson is clear: proactive defence is the only real safeguard. Monitoring fringe channels, detecting narratives early, and maintaining direct lines of communication with stakeholders are now core business functions, not optional extras.

Pre-emptive storytelling, where companies anticipate disinformation and “inoculate” audiences with facts, has to complement traditional crisis management. Partnerships with fact-checkers, trusted influencers, and even competitors in vulnerable industries can create resilience against viral falsehoods.

Ultimately, misinformation is not just a reputational issue but a strategic one. Companies that integrate misinformation defence into their governance and risk frameworks will be better placed to protect their brands, investors, and customers. Those that do not will continue to underestimate a threat that is already reshaping the business landscape.

The post Misinformation: The rising business hazard appeared first on International Finance.