AFP The European Central Bank held key interest rates at historic lows Thursday, but made no announcement regarding Greece despite speculation it may offer a helping hand to its cash-strapped banks. Meeting in the Austrian capital instead of its usual home venue in Frankfurt, the ECB’s decision-making governing council voted not to alter borrowing costs, which have been at …

  AP A US congressional committee is investigating how hackers managed to divert US$101 million from Bank of Bangladesh accounts held at the Federal Reserve in New York. The February theft led the Bangladesh central bank’s chairman to resign, and added to worries about the security of online bank data. This week, the Science Committee in the US House of …

  REUTERS Kuwait’s Gulf Bank said a court ruled in favour of the lender in a 55.3 million dinar (US$182.99 million) dispute with The Cube Group to auction assets, according to a bourse filing. This is to go towards covering part of its debt to the lender, Gulf Bank said in the statement. The court ruling is final, the statement …

  Bloomberg Brazil’s state development bank BNDES will sell equity assets and utilize concessions and privatisations as it seeks to attract the private investment needed to pull Latin America’s largest economy out of recession, according to the bank’s new president. Maria Silvia Bastos Marques took over as head of the bank known as BNDES, saying she will personally oversee the …

  BLOOMBERG Australia’s securities regulator is set to start civil legal proceedings against National Australia Bank Ltd. for allegedly manipulating the nation’s benchmark swap rate, according to a person familiar with the matter. It will be the third such legal action in a more-than three-year investigation by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission into alleged manipulation of the bank-bill swap …

  Bloomberg Japan for years has been renowned for having the world’s largest government debt load. No longer. That’s if you consider how the effective public borrowing burden is plunging — by one estimate as much as the equivalent of 15 percentage points of gross domestic product a year, putting it on track toward a more manageable level. Accounting for …

  Taipei / AFP Reducing errors made during surgery, bringing school books to life, enabling us to browse shops from the comfort of home — virtual reality is not just about gaming, it will change our lives, according to some tech leaders. “VR” is the buzz industry at Asia’s largest tech fair, Computex, being held in Taiwan’s capital Taipei this …

  Bloomberg For more than a century, buyers and sellers shouted out orders for Darjeeling tea at auctions in India before they were shipped to high-end purveyors in Europe, Japan and the US. Now, the prized black tea is poised to enter the digital age, with Darjeeling trade moving online from June. India harvested 1.19 billion kilograms of leaves in …

  RITIKA SHARMA / Emirates Business Her Excellency Sara Al Madani is a well-known fashion designer, entrepreneur and founder of Rouge Couture fashion label and is best known for the fact that she stated working at an age of 15. In 2014 she was selected by his Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan Al Qassimi as a board member at Sharjah Chamber …

  Our Correspondent / EMIRATES BUSINESS Boehringer Ingelheim is one of the world’s 20 leading pharmaceutical companies. Headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, Boehringer Ingelheim operates globally through 145 affiliates and a total of some 47,500 employees. The focus of the family-owned company, founded in 1885, is on researching, developing, manufacturing and marketing new medications of high therapeutic value for human and …