Europe

With Theresa May - preparing to enact Article 50 officially starting the Brexit process from the EU - set to meet Trump tomorrow as the new US president's first meeting with an international leader to lay the groundwork for a U.S.-U.K. trade deal, the outcome will provide the first test for how world leaders can deal with Donald Trump, who has put the world on edge with his recent push for isolationism and trade protectionism, culminating most recently with his tweet that Mexico's president needn't bother visiting if Mexico will not pay for the wall along the Mexican-US border.

Who can forget the "doom and gloom" warnings about the fate of the UK should Brexit win? Well, according to the latest confirmation received on Thursday, they were not only wrong but with an ironic twist because according to the Office for National Statistics, the UK economy grew by 0.6% in the Q4 of 2016, more than the 0.5% consensus estimate, and - more importantly - grew by 2% for all of 2016, making the UK the fastest growing economy among the G7 in the past year.

With global stock markets basking in the afterglow of Dow crossing 20,000 for the first time, on Thursday they propelled higher in sympathy with the US, as Asia and Europe are trading solidly in the green, as is the dollar which rebounded strongly off a 5 week low. Copper touched the highest price since November after reports of lower production. Global government bonds extended declines as France’s 10-year yield breached 1% for the first time in more than a year. Gold declined.

Concluding weeks of speculation, overnight Johnson & Johnson announced it agreed to acquire Actelion Pharmaceuticals, Europe’s biggest biotech company, for $30 billion, or CHF280 per share, expanding the U.S. pharma giant’s portfolio of rare-disease treatments as its top-selling drug faces new competition.

After coming out of a 2016 Presidential election cycle in which one candidate was the subject of multiple federal investigations related to illegal pay-to-play activities as well as the illegal destruction of federal records subject to a Congressional subpoena, perhaps it shouldn't be so shocking that the United States was ranked 18th on Transparency International's 2016 "Corruption Perceptions Index."  But irrespective of our expectations, here is how the United States stacks up against other countries in terms of mass corruption of our publicly elected officials and the institutions they