Podcasts

Angela Merkel will stand for a fourth term as German Chancellor. The announcement has already had some market comments: Laura Foll, of Henderson Global Investors, said she would welcome her re-election because Mrs Merkel has proved to be "quite pragmatic" about Brexit negotiations, "more so than other European leaders". Share Radio's Politics Presenter Colin Bloom joined us to discuss this and other political developments in Europe, which have been upsetting the single currency and markets.

It seems that in spite of the UK's leadership in so many financial and techie areas, it's taking a long time to drag insurance into the cloud-based, digital age. It could be because of regulation and worries about security but insurance remains a very traditional industry with much processing and record-taking still carried out on paper. Unsurprisingly, the financial service technology provider FIS wants to change all this. It has just asked 500 global insurance companies about their attitudes to industry innovation. Share Radio's Presenter Nigel Cassidy spoke to Martin Sarjeant, Risk Solutions Chief at FIS, to find out more

Tom Floyd, Senior Sales Trader at corporate forex broker Foenix Partners, joined Share Radio to look ahead to the Autumn Statement. He talks US Federal Reserve's Chair Janet Yellen indication that interest rates could rise "relatively soon", whilst also looking ahead to the Italian Constitutional referendum and Europe's elections.

The French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has admitted that Front National leader Marine LePen could win the upcoming presidential election. Mr Valls says Donald Trump's victory in America had shown that similar anti-globalisation nationalist rhetoric could triumph in France as well. Ms Le Pen's centre right rival French ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy has been knocked out of the primary to choose a presidential candidate, and with the mainstream parties struggling to decide on their preferred candidate, the Front National leader is wasting no time in trying to appeal to voters. Share Radio's Robert Van Egghen reports.

As projects like Crossrail and HS2 are going ahead, some analysts are expecting an array of further building projects to be announced by Chancellor Philip Hammond, setting bigger budgets for local infrastructure in this week's Autumn Statement. Share Radio's Matt Cox spoke to Richard Threlfall, Partner and UK Sector Head for Infrastructure, Building and Construction at KPMG, who started by explaining why people are eyeing local infrastructure so closely.

Christmas is supposed to be a time where Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, but in modern times, Christmas is much more heavily defined by consumerism. Marc looks at the ramifications of this with Harry Farley of Christian Today and Reverend David Cloake.

This week, whistleblowing, the continuing debate over how to define those who work in the gig economy, why some employers are doing themselves no favours by ignoring the wealth of talent among ex-service personnel and we ask if a new C Suite role should be created, the Chief Workplace Officer.

Linda meets the team at Karma Cola, the Fairtrade, organic and 'great taste award-winning' drinks company that do good.

Waze is a traffic app that works by drivers feeding in info about jams and traffic hold ups using crowd-sourced data from the Waze community. Other drivers can use the app and GPS to plan their routes and it not only cuts down on traffic congestion, there's also evidence to suggest it speeds up police, fire and ambulance response times. Linda meets the team behind the app, to find out how it's changing the way we drive.

MPs are planning to adapt legislation to clamp down on the online secondary ticket "racket" which is pricing fans out of concerts. Presenter Matthew Cook with Michael Waterson of Warwick university who put the Independent Review of Consumer Protection Measures concerning Online Secondary Ticketing Facilities" to Commons Culture Select Committee to find out more. Matthew also spoke with Fred Sanguino, independent musician with a collaboration label concept that helps independent artists pull together resources.