Bloomberg Lone Star Funds and Oaktree Capital Group LLC are among bidders shortlisted for two portfolios of soured loans with a combined face value of 4.7 billion euros ($5.4 billion) being sold by Ireland’s so-called bad bank, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Cerberus Capital Management LP is also bidding for both the Project Ruby and ...
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Stubborn Shanghai residents hold a line drawn in rubble
Reuters In a corner of Shanghai, surrounded by a cement wall, lies one of the world’s most valuable fields of debris and garbage. On paper, the Guangfuli neighborhood is a real estate investor’s dream: a plot in the middle of one of the world’s most expensive and fast-rising property markets. But the reality is more like a developer’s nightmare, ...
Read More »RBA unlikely to hit target in 2016
Sydney / BLOOMBERG Australia’s central bank forecast core inflation is unlikely to reach the bottom of its target this year and will probably only do so in the ensuing two years as the developed-world disinflation quandary emerges Down Under. The central bank, in its quarterly statement, left estimated economic growth at 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent this year and ...
Read More »Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo beats expectations in Q1
Milan / AFP Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo reported earnings ahead of market expectations as bad loan risks on its books diminished. Net profit fell 24.2 percent in the first quarter to 806 million euros ($920.4 million), which compares with forecasts by analysts of around 708 million. Operating profit dropped on the back of falling interest income and earnings from ...
Read More »Prosecutors probe Deutsche Bank for Italian debt sale
MILAN / AP-BLOOMBERG Italian prosecutors are investigating top former Deutsche Bank management on suspicion of market manipulation related to the sale of €7 billion of Italian government bonds in 2011. News agency ANSA reported that financial police have taken depositions and seized documents in Deutsche Bank’s Italian headquarters in Milan in recent days. Deutsche Bank, based in Frankfurt, Germany, ...
Read More »Loans rattle Belarus banks as economy downslides
Bloomberg The Belarusian central bank warned that the financial industry is under increasing strain from a buildup in overdue loans as company profits suffer during an economic contraction. “We are facing an accelerated manifestation of accumulated credit risks,†central bank Chairman Pavel Kallaur said at a news conference in the capital, Minsk. “The difficult situation in the real sector ...
Read More »Japan’s Honda Estilo shapes Austrian small-town soccer team
Horn, Austria /Â DPA There is nothing very Asian about the quiet little Austrian town of Horn. It is surrounded by rolling hills and forests, and like any respectable central European town, it boasts a medieval church, old buildings with red-tile roofs, and the manor-house of a local noble family. But when you enter the stadium of the Horn football ...
Read More »Old locomotives attract train-spotters to Nuremberg railway museum
DPA A German electric locomotive from 1933 is one of five historic items of rolling stock recently added to the DB Museum, a Nuremberg, Germany museum that is paradise for trainspotters. The 1933 engine, which was built by the Wismar/SSW engine works and used to haul passenger and freight trains in southern and central Germany, is one of three ...
Read More »Turkey’s world expo has a ‘greener world’ theme
DPA “A greener world†is the underlying theme at the just-opened world exposition in Turkey’s southern coastal city of Antalya, a place which, with its mass tourism industry and towering concrete hotel complexes, is not exactly known as an environmental paradise. Turkish officials hope this jaded image will be improved when visitors see the EXPO 2016 Antalya International Horticultural ...
Read More »Netflix launches tool for mobile data controls
San Francisco/ AFP Netflix released a new tool to help people viewing streamed television shows on mobile devices avoid costly bills for high data use. The move comes shortly after Netflix expanded its service to nearly every country on the planet, wooing potential subscribers in vast array of places where smartphones are preferred devices for connecting to the Internet. ...
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