Hong Kong / AFP HSBC said on Wednesday net profit plunged in April-June and that the bank was heading into “a period of heightened uncertainty” after Britain voted to leave the European Union. Profit after tax sank 40 percent on-year to $2.61 billion, the firm said in a statement, but assured it had weathered the Brexit storm “securely”. The firm ...

  Paris / AFP French bank Societe Generale said on Wednesday its second-quarter earnings rose 8.1 percent from a year earlier, bolstered by the sale of its shares in Visa Europe. The bank reported a 1.5 billion euro ($1.7 billion) net profit for the period, higher than the 1.4 billion euros predicted by economists in a survey by FactSet. Selling its ...

  London / AFP The Bank of England (BoE) is expected to slash interest rates to a record-low 0.25 percent this week and could pump more stimulus into the economy as it battles the fallout from Britain’s vote to leave the EU, economists say. The announcement, due Thursday after the British central bank’s latest monetary policy meeting, would take rates to their ...

  Nairobi / AFP Kenya’s banking industry last year recorded the first decline in profit since 1999 as costs outpaced income in the wake of two failures and more onerous regulations. Pretax profit across the sector declined 5 percent to 134 billion shillings ($1.3 billion) in the 12 months through December, according to the central bank’s Bank Supervision Report, released in ...

  The Hague / AFP Dutch bank ING, the country’s biggest lender, said on Wednesday that its second-quarter operating profits rose by more than a quarter as it boosted lending. Underlying net profit, which strips out one-off items, rose by 26.7 percent to 1.4 billion euros ($1.6 billion). Net profit more than quadrupled to 1.3 billion euros, but the huge increase ...

  London / Bloomberg Three of the UK’s biggest banks face extra charges of about 1.5 billion pounds ($2 billion) after the Financial Conduct Authority said it will probably delay a deadline on payment protection insurance complaints by a year, according to Citigroup Inc. Lloyds Banking Group Plc may have to set aside an additional 750 million pounds to cover ...

  The US is running out of places for people to live. Rent is a bigger and bigger part of our cost of living. Here is an index of rental prices divided by median household income: Lots of people have been wondering what to do about this problem. One proposed solution is to deregulate housing and encourage denser development. This ...

  Narayana Kocherlakota A wave of popular dissatisfaction, expressed in support for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, has shocked both of America’s leading political parties. The protest vote, however, shouldn’t come as a surprise: For many important demographic groups, the last two presidencies have been an economic disaster. Let’s start with white Americans. If you’re wondering why Trump’s anti-establishment rhetoric ...

  Paul Ferraro Water, we are repeatedly told, will be “next oil.” In the U.S., climate projections predict increasing drought frequency throughout most of the country. Around the world, political and even military conflicts due to water scarcity are multiplying. Water is a limited and essential resource, and we are becoming more sensitive to the need to use it wisely. ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business As many as 2,400 new hotel rooms will open in Abu Dhabi throughout 2016, according to a new report. The Abu Dhabi Hotel Market Summary report by JLL prepared ahead of The Hotel Show Dubai 2016 reveals that 200 rooms opened in Q2 2016 with the soft opening of the Four Seasons on Al Maryah ...