Banking

  DUBAI / Reuters National Bank of Oman (NBO) said on Thursday it had received a letter from Treasure Fleet International proposing to buy a stake in Oman’s third biggest lender. NBO will review the proposal; no legally binding commitments have been made and any deal would be subject to approval by shareholders and regulators, it said in a bourse ...

  Bloomberg The dollar dropped to a two-week low against the yen as traders pushed it through stops in thin trading amid a slide in Treasury yields. The greenback weakened against all its major peers on Thursday, with leveraged funds shorting the dollar against the yen as the currency pair continued a pull back from a 10-month high. Bloomberg’s dollar ...

  Bloomberg Investors may grow increasingly skeptical of the European Central Bank meeting its inflation target, with a host of factors — some beyond the control of President Mario Draghi — exposing the limitations of policy makers’ toolkit. The monetary authority’s efforts to bring inflation close to 2 percent “without undue delay” are being curbed by judicial hurdles to changing ...

  Bloomberg Singapore’s commodities-related defaults could turn out to be the canary in the mine. Despite a modest rebound in resource prices, restructuring specialists including KPMG and Hogan Lovells Lee & Lee see more Asia-Pacific commodities and shipping companies being pushed into delinquency. Law firm DLA Piper said there could be choppy waters ahead on rising interest rates and President-elect ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Banking shares boosted Saudi Arabia’s stock index to its highest level this year, while other Gulf markets moved little in quiet trade with some foreign investors absent for New Year holidays. The Saudi index closed up 1.3 percent at 7,257 points in its highest trading volume for two weeks, rising above technical resistance at this year’s ...

  DUBAI / Reuters National Bank of Kuwait (NBK), the Gulf Arab state’s largest commercial lender, and investment firm KAMCO said they had been invited by the public debt office at the Kuwaiti ministry of finance to participate in a bond issue by the government. A request for proposals has been sent to NBK’s subsidiary NBK Capital to help arrange ...

  Bloomberg Egyptian companies unable to repay US-dollar denominated debts after the devaluation of the pound will be allowed to negotiate fixed exchange rates with banks. The move aims to alleviate financial pressure on manufacturers following the central bank’s decision to remove all restrictions on the local currency on Nov. 3. The pound has since lost more than half its ...

  Bloomberg Britons are holding onto their cash in a sign that they may be hunkering down in the face of economic uncertainties, according to the British Bankers Association. Personal deposits grew an annual 4.8 percent in November, data compiled by the BBA show. They increased by 32.4 billion pounds ($39.7 billion) in the first 11 months of the year, ...

  Bloomberg China’s requirement for how much cash banks must hold as reserves is “very high” and should be reduced at an “appropriate time,” a senior banking regulator said, according to a media report. Other financing tools can be used to manage the money supply after easing the required reserve ratio, China Banking Regulatory Commission official Yu Xuejun said at ...

  Bloomberg The European Central Bank sees Italian lender Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA needing about 8.8 billion euros ($9.2 billion) of capital to bolster its balance sheet after liquidity deteriorated this month. The calculation is based on the results of a 2016 stress test, the Italian bank said in a statement, citing two letters from the ECB ...