LONDON / Bloomberg Britain’s banks have criticised the UK Treasury’s plan to pare back the scope of the bank levy to lenders’ domestic businesses only, warning international operations could still be subject to taxation after the changes. Under the government’s current proposal, funds raised at a UK holding company level and then passed down to an international subsidiary would continue ...

BAKU / Bloomberg The once-in-a-generation crash in oil prices sent the Azeri economy staggering into a crisis and the central bank is running out of options to stop the unraveling. Every seventh lender is now shut, the currency is testing new lows and by one measure Azerbaijan’s international reserves are as thin as Ukraine’s. The central bank has little to ...

Beijing / AFP China’s bank loans plunged in February from January, the central bank said, despite government efforts to encourage lending to keep the world’s second-largest economy from slowing. New loans extended by banks slid to 726.6 billion yuan ($112 billion), the People’s Bank of China said, a massive drop from January’s record 2.51 trillion yuan lending surge. The figure ...