Babylon, New York / AP Matt Price and his wife, Carla, are gambling that the devastation inflicted by Superstorm Sandy will be their key to the American dream of home ownership. The couple was among the successful bidders at an auction on Wednesday that sold off the last of more than 400 flood-damaged houses that were purchased by New York ...

  Bloomberg Count Goldman Sachs Group Inc. among the growing list of banks abandoning their calls for the euro to reach parity with the dollar by the end of the year. The New York-based bank joined Deutsche Bank AG this week in scrapping forecasts for the common currency to slump to $1 or below in 2016, citing changed outlooks for ...

  Bloomberg Demand from the wealthy for loans is so strong that Credit Suisse Group AG can’t keep up, according to its international wealth chief, Iqbal Khan. “We couldn’t execute all the demand we had” in the first quarter, Khan said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Zurich. “We have a very material lending in pipeline.” The Swiss ...

  Reuters The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) will elect a new president next week during its annual meeting to be held in Jakarta, replacing long-serving President Ahmad Mohamed Ali, the Jeddah-based multilateral lender said. Saudi Arabia, the IDB’s largest shareholder, has nominated former Haj Minister Bandar Hajjar for the post, whose candidacy was endorsed by the outgoing IDB president. The ...

  Reuters The Lebanese economy is expected to grow 2 percent this year and deposits in Lebanese banks are forecast to rise by 4.5 to 5 percent, or around $8 billion, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh said this week. Salameh, speaking at an economic conference in Beirut, described the economic growth as acceptable, adding that the International Monetary Fund had ...

  Reuters Bahrain’s Bank ABC is set to appoint Christopher Wilmot to head its treasury department, sources aware of the matter said. Wilmot will start at the Bahraini lender next month, according to two of the sources, with one saying his title would be group head of treasury and financial markets. The current group treasurer at Bank ABC, John Eldredge, ...

  Bloomberg Nedbank Group Ltd., the South African lender being spun off from parent Old Mutual Plc, said it’s in talks that may lead to the acquisition of a Kenyan bank as it seeks to benefit from an economic growth rate that’s double the average for the rest of the continent. “Within the next 12 months we’ll certainly be looking ...

  Shanghai / AFP China’s bank lending fell sharply in April, the central bank said, as the government refrained from boosting credit amid concerns over growing risk. Bank loans reached 555.6 billion yuan ($85.2 billion) in April, down sharply from 1.37 trillion yuan in March, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) said. The latest figure missed a median forecast of 1.3 ...

  Bloomberg Swift, the inter-bank messaging system embroiled in one of the largest cyber heists in history, warned customers that hackers have struck again, attacking a commercial bank client that it didn’t name. The details of a second hack follow a cyber-theft in February, when more than $80 million was stolen from Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of ...

  SAN FRANCISCO / AP At the Clift Hotel in San Francisco, there are more than 370 rooms inside and hundreds of thousands of bees buzzing above in rooftop hives outside. Yes, honeybees. Aware of the well-publicized environmental threats to honeybees that have reduced numbers worldwide, seven San Francisco hotels have built hives on their rooftops. The sustainability effort also benefits ...