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Economy

European Firms Eager For Chinese Investment, While US And UK Stay Skeptical

According to a new study published by financial communications network AMO, European firms are becoming more and more proactive in looking for financing from China. The enthusiasm is not shared across the West.

*NEWSBITES

PARIS - European businesses are on the hunt for Chinese investment money, according to a new study by financial group AMO. The study, which surveyed 71 large multinationals across 12 countries, shows that continental Europeans are actively pursuing Chinese investors, whereas the British are still focusing on the U.S. As for the Americans, there remains a deep-seated reluctance to get their funding from Chinese investment funds.

This breakdown is in line with the evolution of Chinese investment around the world: Europe has become China's preferred destination for mergers and acquisitions. German and French companies are the most proactive, and have already secured a significant amount of Chinese institutional funding, whereas Italy, Spain and Scandinavia still have far fewer Chinese shareholders.

In the UK and the U.S., the dominant view is that Chinese investors, although hands-off, are still perceived as lacking transparency. Nicholas R. Lardy, a researcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics believes the Americans "are still being cautious for the wrong political reasons." Apart from the mining industry, which is determined to take advantage of the interest it generates, the U.S has pursued little or no Chinese investments at all. Only a third of the managers interviewed by AMO said they were thinking about financing opportunities from China.

The study also provides an interesting overview of the investment strategies in China. For now, they seem to want to remain discrete, with very few companies surveyed reporting any investment above 5%.

*Newsbites are digest items, not direct translations.

Read the full article in Les Echos in French.

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Society

Get That Dog *On The Couch! Diagnosing And Treating Canine Anxiety

As with people, some dogs may be more neurologically prone to anxiety. But canine stress is often mistaken for mischief.

Get That Dog *On The Couch! Diagnosing And Treating Canine Anxiety

Pug in a blanket.

Ula Chrobak

A couple of week after I adopted my dog, Halle, I realized she had a problem. When left alone, she would pace, bark incessantly, and ignore any treats I left her in favor of chewing my belongings. When I returned, I’d find my border collie mix panting heavily with wide, fearful eyes. As frustrated as I was, though, I restrained the urge to scold her, realizing her destruction was born out of panic.

Halle’s behavior was a textbook illustration of separation anxiety. Distressed over being left alone, an otherwise perfectly mannered pup might chomp the couch, scratch doors, or relieve themselves on the floor. Problem behaviors like these tend to be interpreted as acts of willful defiance, but they often stem from intense emotions. Dogs, like humans, can act out of character when they are distressed. And, as with people, some dogs may be neurologically more prone to anxiety.

So concluded a recent brain imaging study, published in PLOS One, in which researchers performed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging on 25 canines that were deemed behaviorally “normal,” and 13 that had been diagnosed with anxiety, based on a behavioral evaluation. The scans revealed that anxious dogs had stronger connections between several of five brain regions that the researchers called the anxiety circuit: the amygdala, frontal lobe, hippocampus, mesencephalon, and thalamus.

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