“The Implementation of DORA…”

Given the ever-increasing risks of cyber-attacks, the EU is strengthening the IT security of financial entities such as banks, insurance companies and investment firms.

Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA)

The Council adopted the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) which will make sure that the financial sector in Europe is able to stay resilient through a severe operational disruption.

DORA applies to critical third partieswhich provide ICT (Information Communication Technologies)-related services to financial entities. It creates a regulatory framework on digital operational resilience, whereby all firms need to make sure they can withstand, respond to, and recover from all types of ICT-related disruptions and threats.

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) aims first at consolidating and upgrading the ICT risk requirements addressed so far separately in the different Regulations and Directives. While those Union legal acts covered the main categories of financial risk (e.g., credit risk, market risk, counterparty credit risk and liquidity risk, market conduct risk), they could not comprehensively tackle, at the time of their adoption, all components of operational resilience.

All components of the DORA must be implemented 24 months after its entry-into-force in Q1 2023, meaning that we expect firms to have to implement the DORA by the very beginning of 2025.

China defends its COVID response after WHO, Biden concerns

China defended on Thursday its handling of its raging COVID-19 outbreak after U.S. President Joe Biden voiced concern and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Beijing was under-reporting virus deaths.

The WHO’s emergencies director, Mike Ryan, said on Wednesday in some of the U.N. health agency’s most critical remarks to date, that Chinese officials were under-representing data on several fronts.

China scrapped its stringent COVID controls last month after protests against them, abandoning a policy that had shielded its 1.4 billion population from the virus for three years.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular press briefing in Beijing that China had transparently and quickly shared COVID data with the WHO.

Mao said that China’s “epidemic situation is controllable” and that it hoped the WHO would “uphold a scientific, objective, and impartial position”.

“Facts have proved that China has always, in accordance with the principles of legality, timeliness, openness and transparency, maintained close communication and shared relevant information and data with the WHO in a timely manner,” Mao said.

Euro zone recession may not be as deep as expected

Euro zone business activity contracted less than initially thought at the end of last year as price pressures eased, according to a survey which suggested the bloc’s recession may not be as deep as expected.

“The euro zone economy continued to deteriorate in December, but the strength of the downturn moderated for a second successive month, tentatively pointing to a contraction in the economy that may be milder than was initially anticipated,” said Joe Hayes, senior economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Amazon CEO says job cuts to exceed 18,000 roles

Amazon.com Inc’s AMZN.O layoffs will now increase to more than 18,000 roles as part of a workforce reduction it previously disclosed, Chief Executive Andy Jassy said in a public staff note on Wednesday.

The layoff decisions, which Amazon will communicate starting Jan. 18, will largely impact the company’s e-commerce and human-resources organizations, he said.

The cuts amount to 6% of Amazon’s roughly 300,000-person corporate workforce and represent a swift turn for a retailer that recently doubled its base pay ceiling to compete more aggressively for talent.

Amazon has more than 1.5 million workers including warehouse staff, making it America’s second-largest private employer after Walmart Inc WMT.N.

Its stock rose 2% in after-hours trade.

Jassy said in the note that annual planning “has been more difficult given the uncertain economy and that we’ve hired rapidly over the last several years.”

Amazon still must file certain legal notices about mass layoffs, and it plans to pay severance.

Ukraine pleads with allies to send tanks as fighting grinds on in east

Ukrainian and Russian troops battled in eastern regions on Thursday as Kyiv tried to push back occupying forces, while President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the West to provide his army with heavy tanks to boost their firepower.

The Ukrainian military said the Russians were focused on an offensive in the Bakhmut sector of the Donetsk region, but their attacks in the Avdiivka and Kupiansk sectors were unsuccessful.

The governor of neighbouring Luhansk region, meanwhile, said Ukrainian troops were recapturing areas there “step-by-step” but cautioned it was “not happening fast”.

Russia declared Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as part of its territory in September after referendums condemned by Ukraine and Western countries. Russia does not fully control any of the four regions.

Bakhmut, which is now largely in ruins after months of battering by Russian artillery, is important because the Russian leadership wants to have a success to hold up to the Russian public after a series of setbacks in the war.

It is located on a strategic supply line between the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Gaining control of the city, with a pre-war population of 70,000-80,000 that has shrunk to close to 10,000, could give Russia a stepping stone to advance on two bigger cities – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

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