Category: 3. Business

More than two-thirds (69%) of European shoppers reveal they’ve discovered a hidden present before the big day, and almost the same number ( 67%) feel guilty about packaging waste at Christmas.

Four in ten (40%)* European consumers have hidden Christmas presents so well they couldn’t find them again until after Christmas Day, according to new research commissioned by Amazon. The survey of more than 10,000 adults in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy reveals the creative lengths shoppers go to when hiding gifts, with some using suitcases (17%), sock drawers (14%), and even washing machines or tumble dryers (3%) as secret hiding spots. Meanwhile, more than two thirds (69%) of respondents admit to discovering their own Christmas gift before the 25^th of December.

With the festive season approaching, Amazon has shared the findings with a reminder to customers. One in two Amazon orders now comes in reduced packaging or the product’s original box. This means less packaging for customers to recycle and it has helped the company avoid more than 4 million metric tons of packaging since 2015.

For some popular gifts, this may mean they arrive without additional Amazon packaging, revealing what’s inside. So if you’re buying a present for someone you live with and they might be home when it’s delivered, simply tick the box at checkout to add Amazon packaging and keep the surprise.

Thais Blumer, Head of Sustainable Packaging, Amazon Europe said: “We’re proud that over half of Amazon orders in Europe now ship with reduced, recyclable packaging, or without anything but a shipping label added by us – helping customers reduce clutter and cut waste. But for those special surprises that need a bit more discretion, there’s always the option to add extra packaging at checkout.”

Key research findings:

• Hiding habits: The most common hiding places for Christmas gifts in Europe according to survey respondents are wardrobes/cupboards (48%), under the bed (31%), in the attic or loft (18%), in a suitcase (17%) or in a sock drawer (14%) with other spots including behind books on a shelf (15%), in a toolbox (7%), in the laundry bin (5%) and in a washing machines or tumble dryer (3%).
• Lost and found: 40% of European shoppers surveyed have hidden gifts so well they couldn’t find them again until after Christmas Day.
• Surprise spoilers: While 69% of respondents admit to discovering a present early, 42% of European consumers surveyed say this made them feel disappointed or guilty.
• Festive waste: 67% of European respondents feel guilty about excess packaging waste at Christmas.
• Reusing wrapping: European shoppers have used more sustainable alternatives to wrap their gifts with four in ten (41%) of respondents reusing delivery boxes or brown paper, 29% using newspapers or magazines and 16% using swatches of fabric, handkerchiefs or old scarves. Twelve per cent of respondents admit to wrapping gifts tin foil!

For those who want to maintain the surprise without adding additional packaging, Prime members can also select Amazon Day Delivery to choose a specific day when they know gift recipients won’t be home.

Amazon’s Ships in Product Packaging programme is part of the company’s wider efforts to reduce waste across its operations. By shipping items in right-sized packaging – or, where possible, in just the manufacturer’s box – Amazon helps to reduce unnecessary materials and the amount of packaging customers need to recycle at home. Since 2019, more than 1 billion shipments have been sent without added Amazon packaging, arriving in the product’s original box with only a shipping label attached. 

Read more about how Amazon continues to improve its packaging.

*Figures taken from a survey of 10,398 consumers in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, conducted by Kantar between 23^rd October and 3rd November 202

The report (pdf, 2.9mb/16 pages) by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) found that generative AI usage among financial institutions had surged by 166% over the past year. Overall, AI adoption in the DIFC rose from 33% of firms in 2024 to 52% in 2025, with significant growth seen in ‘narrow’ AI systems for specific tasks, deep learning and machine learning models.

Despite this rapid uptake, the survey highlighted persistent governance gaps. The DFSA found that 21% of the 661 companies surveyed for the report have yet to introduce clear accountability mechanisms for governing their usage of AI. Similarly, the report warned that 26% of companies that use AI applications in a critical area of their business have no governance framework, with a further 11% lacking it around considerable or important areas of the business.

“The uptake in AI has been rapid, but this comes against a backdrop of evolving regulatory expectations,” said Marie Chowdhry, a fintech expert with Pinsent Masons in Dubai.

“Companies operating in the DIFC must immediately assess whether their governance frameworks adequately address the risks and responsibilities associated with their current level of AI deployments. This assessment should cover compliance with existing regulatory expectations at a minimum, but the strongest and most robust firms will also be looking to the future as this is a fast evolving area where we anticipate evolving standards, ethical considerations, and operational resilience obligations becoming more important, as AI becomes more deeply embedded in business models. Boards and senior management need to ensure that oversight mechanisms, accountability structures, and risk controls are robust enough to support both present use cases and future innovation,” she said.

A need for clearer regulation of AI usage was identified as one of the main barriers to AI adoption, according to the report, with more than 38% of companies citing regulatory uncertainty as their biggest hurdle. The DFSA also found the majority of firms surveyed are still seeking clarification on how existing regulations apply to AI usage.

Nevertheless, 60% of the surveyed companies plan to increase their usage of AI systems in the next year, with three-quarters of all companies aiming to increase their AI involvement in the next three years.

Job opportunities didn’t shrink as expected in October, but hiring continued to stall and layoffs increased in a month when the US government was shut down and hundreds of thousands of federal workers were furloughed, according to new data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There were an estimated 7.67 million US jobs available at the end of October, a slight increase from 7.66 million in September and 7.23 million in August (which was last available data prior to the federal shutdown), according to the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

Still, despite the very slight pickup in posted jobs, Tuesday’s report showed further weakening across the US labor market: Hiring activity slipped, layoffs moved higher and fewer people quit their jobs.

The BLS’ JOLTS report is a closely watched indicator of turnover activity, an important dynamism needed for a healthy labor market.

Tuesday’s data, however, comes with some added caveats as well as some added significance.

The October JOLTS report is the latest in a line of federal economic data affected by the federal shutdown. The report, which was originally slated for release last week, includes data for September, which had not been released until now.

The October data also was negatively impacted by the statistical agency’s inability to collect, process, analyze and disseminate economic data during the shutdown, which lasted from October 1 through November 12.

Still, it’s the first labor market release for October from the BLS. As such, it’s the most up-to-date official look at the job market for Federal Reserve policymakers, who are currently meeting to consider their next move on rates. An announcement is due at 2 p.m. ET on Wednesday.

This story is developing and will be updated.

WASHINGTON — TrustPoint, a five-year-old startup building a low-Earth-orbit navigation network as an alternative or complement to GPS, says it is on track to soft launch C-band PNT services in 2027. The schedule depends on continued on-orbit demonstrations and receiver integration over the next two years, but the company says early tests and government interest are strong enough to support the target.

CEO and co-founder Patrick Shannon told SpaceNews that TrustPoint expects to draw on both military and commercial funding to accelerate deployment of a constellation that could eventually reach 300 satellites. The company bills itself as a complementary PNT provider to global navigation satellite systems such as GPS and Galileo, with differentiation rooted in its business model, orbital architecture and signal design.

Shannon said TrustPoint’s early development has been financed through private seed investments and government SpaceWERX contracts to validate ground infrastructure and its encrypted C-band payload. Those efforts have supported tests now underway using three satellites in orbit. Even at this stage, he said, the company is getting a “strong demand signal from the U.S. government.”

Defense agencies in the United States and abroad are looking for alternatives as jamming incidents continue to expose weaknesses in legacy GPS signals, particularly in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Shannon said. He described TrustPoint’s approach as “throwing out the rule book” in order to meet modern security and performance needs.

A central choice is to broadcast navigation signals solely in C-band, which runs roughly from 4 to 8 GHz, a higher frequency than L-band’s range of 1 to 2 GHz, a spectrum traditionally used by GPS and other GNSS operators. C-band signals can carry more data but demand more precise antennas. 

From a security perspective, Shannon said adversaries are well-versed in jamming and spoofing L-band signals. Operating in C-band could complicate hostile efforts tuned to legacy frequencies.

Goal to build 300 satellites

TrustPoint, based in Herndon, Virginia, builds its payloads in-house and plans to announce a U.S. manufacturing partner for its cubesat-class satellites. Shannon estimates the full system will reach about 300 spacecraft, although “you can do quite a bit with as few as 60 or 80.” 

A service reliable enough for military use could be available in 2027, he said, with a complete buildout by 2029. The full constellation would be needed for the most challenging applications, including street-level urban environments.

By 2027, “we will have enough satellites on orbit to provide some augmentation capability,” Shannon said. As more satellites come online, customers would gain access to receivers built by a network of partners designing hardware for the TrustPoint signal.

“We expect there to be two sources of capital to build out the system,” said Shannon. “The first source is private money. I think it’s safe to say commercial companies, backed by private capital, have shown to be very potent in the defense space for their speed and how effective they are at innovating in today’s environment.” That will be paired with “some substantial government support,” he said. 

While the U.S. military is central, “there’s interest globally,” he added. Governments across “top tier allies” are evaluating funding paths and technical requirements aligned with U.S. concerns about PNT resilience.

“We’ve seen advanced Western weapons fail in Eastern Ukraine because of GPS denial. And everyone’s looking for a solution around those problems,” Shannon said. 

Competitive PNT market

A direct competitor to TrustPoint is Xona Space Systems, which is developing a LEO-based PNT constellation called Pulsar. The company launched a demonstration satellite called Huggin in 2022 and its first production-class spacecraft in June 2025. Xona recently said it has shifted its primary focus to L-band signals and tabled its C-band plans for the time being. The decision was driven by practical engineering challenges and market compatibility considerations.

In a blog post, the company said it “learned with Huginn that the C-band signals proved much more challenging for manufacturers to integrate into existing user equipment than we anticipated” and that the signals “were also shown to offer fewer benefits to jamming resistance than initially expected.” 

Another emerging player, oneNav, is pursuing a next-generation GNSS receiver built around modern L5-band signals. Speaking in October at the MilSat conference in California, oneNav co-founder and CEO Stephen Poizner described Xona and TrustPoint as “really interesting startups” working to build “a system that’s equivalent to GPS, effectively, but just with LEOs.” 

Lower orbits, he said, bring stronger signals and better in-building penetration, with the caveat that “it’s going to require a lot of capital.”

Shannon insists that C-band is the right bet. “I think we need to move away from L-band, use more C-band or other frequencies as needed,” he said, noting that some European and Asian firms are exploring similar approaches. Customer feedback supports the strategy, he said. “We get a lot of traction because we’re not in L-bands.”

TrustPoint is also designing a GPS-independent ground architecture, with up to 100 stations providing contact with LEO satellites. Under SpaceWERX contracts, the company is developing a ground control network that does not rely on GPS for timing or orbit determination. Ground transceivers will both monitor the space segment and send ranging signals to satellites, creating a navigation system for LEO constellations.

The company sees potential demand from companies developing space-based interceptor prototypes for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile-defense program. “Space-based interceptors need to know what time it is, and they need to navigate,” Shannon said, noting that TrustPoint’s ground architecture could be adapted for interceptor constellations.

He added that interest spans both ground-to-space and space-to-ground navigation. Operators facing interference over conflict zones have approached the company because “terrestrial jamming sources affect LEO satellites.” Shannon said commercial satellite operators with assets over the Middle East and Eastern Ukraine have reported GPS disruption degrading spacecraft performance. “They’re aware that we’re building our network, and they’ve shown interest in tapping into that network.”

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LAWRENCE — In the U.S. public company audit market, regulators often assume that the absence of competition may lead to lower quality audits. However, a new article reveals competition is often overrated.

“We don’t find any evidence that a lack of competition is problematic. It turns out that auditors who appear to be operating in less competitive markets are more efficient and more effective,” said Will Ciconte, assistant professor of finance at the University of Kansas.

His working paper, titled “Profit persistence in the U.S. audit market,” investigates the relation between audit competition, quality and labor hours. Using proprietary data on auditor realization rates, the findings suggest that lower competition may reflect differentiation and that auditors use market power to deliver high audit quality.

The paper has been accepted to the Journal of Accounting Research.

“More providers should mean more fierce competition, where the provider should then try to differentiate based on their quality, and that should drive quality up and ensure prices stay at a fair price. Unfortunately, that ignores a few things unique about the audit market,” said Ciconte, who co-wrote the article with Andrew Kitto of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Their study focuses on profit persistence (i.e., profits are “sticky” over time). They find certain audit offices have abnormal profits and there does not seem to be enough competitive pressure to drive down those profits over time. This provides evidence supporting concerns expressed by the audit regulator that the audit market lacks competition.

“We interpret the evidence as suggesting auditors with persistent profits are just providing better audits,” he said.

For the main analysis, Ciconte and Kitto measure competition using regressions of abnormal profitability in the current year on abnormal profitability in the prior year. (Abnormal profitability refers to the difference between the profitability for a given audit engagement compared to all engagements in the same year.)

Ciconte said, “We use this measure to explore whether higher profit persistence, which we use as a measure for low competition, is related to auditor effort and quality. We test this by regressing auditor hours, financial statement restatements, PCAOB inspection findings and discretionary accruals on our competition measure.”

Most larger companies rely on one of the Big Four firms — Deloitte, PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), EY (Ernst & Young) and KPMG — for their accounting and auditing. But that comes with its own set of baggage.

“For many of these companies, they can’t get an auditor that’s outside of the Big Four because there’s a need to invest in technology and knowledge and skills to serve the client,” Ciconte said.

“There’s this concern, ‘We only have these four firms that can serve this pool of clients. They don’t have an incentive to do a good job.’ We say, ‘Let’s see what competition looks like inside these markets. And then if we are detecting that there appears to be less competition, what are the implications for stakeholders?’”

Given that Ciconte found a lack of competition wasn’t problematic, then wouldn’t the audit quality be the same if a company were to switch to any of the other Big Four?

“Because these auditors are able to develop skill and expertise which they can then exploit, this creates a barrier so another firm can’t just come in and say, ‘Hey, you should come with us.’ Because switching off that auditor will be costly to the clients. The clients are willing to stick with them because they figured out a way to develop their processes, to get the right people in place to do good work and to get to a quality answer that is not replicable by a competitor,” he said.

The Delaware native started at KU this fall. He considers his expertise a “weird hybrid” of audit research and tax research.

Ciconte said, “I know from my talks with rank-and-file partners in major firms, they’re always monitoring these concerns. They understand what’s going on in the regulatory environment, and so they’re concerned about potential changes. Our study suggests any changes should be done very cautiously. It’s not good to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.”