Baghdad / AFP Dozens of Iraqi lawmakers held an overnight sit-in at parliament to protest efforts by powerful political blocs to maintain control of key government posts, MPs said on Wednesday. The demonstration followed Tuesday’s postponement of a vote on a new lineup for the cabinet, which Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi has said should include technocrats instead of the ...

  Ukraine / AFP Ukraine’s bickering parliament resumed horse-trading on Wednesday over the makeup of a new pro-EU government headed by the chamber’s speaker VolodymyrGroysman that could be voted on the following day. A senior member of President Petro Poroshenko’s party said that “according to my information, all the agreements have been reached and no further questions remain.” “We will ...

Sudan / AFP Among the sprawling thatch huts of Darfur’s Zamzam Camp for displaced civilians, there is little feeling a referendum on administrative status might remedy years of suffering caused by the conflict. The vote on whether Sudan’s restive west should unite its five states into a single region has been touted by Khartoum as proof of stability returning to ...

  Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and three other major US banks failed to persuade regulators they could go bankrupt without disrupting the financial system and could now face a tighter leash from Washington after government agencies used one of the most significant post-crisis powers bestowed under the Dodd-Frank Act. The banks—also including Wells Fargo & ...

  Bloomberg The challenges that led to the collapse of Chase Bank Kenya Ltd. are isolated and don’t indicate an unstable lending industry or pose a systemic risk, according to the East African nation’s main banking lobby group. Chase Bank, which was placed under receivership on April 7, was the third small-sized lender in nine months to go into statutory ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, Europe’s biggest investment bank, hired James Boyle from Citigroup Inc. as global co-head of its equity-derivatives business following a slump in the unit’s sales, according to two people familiar with the decision. Boyle, who is based in Hong Kong, will also be head of equities for the Asia Pacific region, said the people, who asked ...

  Bloomberg An agreement between Italian officials and bank executives to create a multibillion-euro fund to offload bad loans is a step in the right direction, say analysts, but the pact may not be enough to reassure investors that the pain for Italy’s troubled banking sector is over. Banks, insurers and institutional investors agreed to create a vehicle named Atlante ...

  Bloomberg The Bank of England will take responsibility for a U.K. benchmark measure of overnight funding rates as officials seek to prevent a recurrence of the rigging scandals since the global financial crisis. The BOE will provide oversight and governance for the Sterling Overnight Index Average, or Sonia, from April 25, it said in a statement released Wednesday. The ...

  Bloomberg The business of trading stocks has claimed another scalp this year. Nomura is shuttering its equities division in Europe, hot on the heels of Barclays’ pullback from Asian equities. The Japanese bank hadn’t cracked the top 10 list in Europe, and Barclays had failed to do the same in Asia. They won’t be the last to scale back ...

Bloomberg Greek PM Alexis Tsipras will seek help from French President Francois Hollande after talks between his government and its creditors failed — again — to produce the approval needed to release funds from his country’s third bailout. Tsipras will meet his French counterpart in the Elysee Palace with Greek officials still struggling to convince inspectors from the European Commission, ...