DUBAI / Emirates Business Mashreq Bank, one of the UAE’s leading financial institutions, hosted the first VAT awareness seminar for its SME clients in collaboration with Morison MJS Tax Consultancy. With The UAE set to introduce VAT starting January 1, 2018, Mashreq launched a VAT awareness campaign on educating SME customers on how VAT will affect their businesses. This campaign ...
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Saudi’s IDB plans to use blockchain tech for financial inclusion on products
Bloomberg The research arm of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) plans to use blockchain technology to develop sharia-compliant products, aiming to support financial inclusion efforts across its member countries. The Jeddah-based Islamic Research and Training Institute said it had signed an agreement with local firm Ateon and Belgium-based SettleMint, with the first stage to focus on a technical feasibility study. ...
Read More »Al Rajhi Bank records 12.7% surge in Q3 profit
DUBAI / Reuters Al Rajhi Bank, Saudi Arabia’s second-largest lender by assets, reported a 12.7 percent rise in third-quarter net profit on Sunday, in line with analysts’ forecasts. The bank made 2.27 billion riyals ($605.3 million) in the three months to September 30, up from 2.01 billion riyals in the same period a year earlier, it said in a bourse ...
Read More »Turkey regulators say no US probe into banks
Bloomberg Turkish banks aren’t under investigation and US authorities haven’t sent any information or documents to their Turkish counterparts, Mehmet Ali Akben, the head of the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency, or BDDK, told Bloomberg News by phone. His denial was in response to a report in the Haberturk newspaper, citing banking sources it didn’t name, saying six Turkish banks ...
Read More »Goldman Sachs is pricing some research as low as $200 per user
Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is offering fixed-income investors discounted prices for its research once MiFID II rules come into force in January. Firms with as many as 25 users may pay $10,000 annually for a full package of credit research, occasional equity research as well as access to conference calls and ad hoc contact with analysts, according to an ...
Read More »Rift within India’s central bank panel widens as views differ
Bloomberg India’s monetary policy-makers disagreed sharply over whether the economy needed another dose of stimulus, underlining their dilemma as growth slowed with inflation forecast to accelerate. While five on the six-member monetary policy committee voted to keep the key policy rate unchanged this month, one member said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) must be ready to tighten while another ...
Read More »Credit Suisse activist seeks $1bn to back breakup plan
Bloomberg Rudolf Bohli, the activist hedge-fund manager pushing for a breakup of Credit Suisse Group AG, said he’s in talks with more than 150 potential investors with the goal of raising 1 billion francs ($1.02 billion) for his campaign. Bohli, whose firm RBR Capital Advisors AG currently manages about 250 million francs, said most of the potential backers he pitched ...
Read More »Postbank investors may get windfall after Deutsche bank loss
Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG was ordered to pay 14 Postbank shareholders a total of 48 million euros ($57 million) in a ruling that could lead to billions more in compensation for investors who argue the lender short-changed them in a 2010 takeover. The court in Cologne, Germany, backed the argument of shareholders who accepted the original offer, but dismissed suits ...
Read More »Lloyds ‘mugged’ investors in 2009 HBOS deal, says lawyer
Bloomberg Lloyds Banking Group Plc mugged shareholders when it got them to agree to the “catastrophic†HBOS deal at the height of the global financial crisis, a lawyer representing thousands of investors suing the bank said on the first day of a London trial. Senior executives “pursued a dangerous and value-destroying strategy†to push the deal through, Richard Hill, the ...
Read More »Bitcoin breaches $6,000
Bloomberg Bitcoin soared to another milestone, as the digital currency breached $6,000 for the first time to put its gain in 2017 to more than 500 percent. As bitcoin continues climbing, Twitter users are speculating that the rise could be driven by everything from a cash shortage in Zimbabwe to an increase in margin trading. If one thing is for ...
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