Dubai / Emirates Business UAE banks are rapidly adopting global best practices in securing online bank accounts and digital payments, industry experts commented today on a new report. Automation of security is the most frequently deployed digital transformation initiative among banks in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, according to the recent IDC report, “The Digital Ready Bank”. When ...

  Bloomberg The Bank of England (BoE) will run two stress tests on the country’s biggest lenders next year, an annual assessment of risks from the financial cycle and an “exploratory” scenario geared to “emerging or latent threats” to financial stability. The central bank will publish the two scenarios in the first quarter of next year. The firms participating in ...

Bloomberg A “superstar” Barclays Plc trader fired amid the foreign-exchange market manipulation scandal lost his unfair dismissal case in London, three weeks after regulators banned him from the U.S. banking industry. The bank took “appropriate actions in light of” Chris Ashton’s “gross misconduct,” a London employment tribunal judge said in a Sept. 19 ruling. The decision is a rare complete ...

  Washington / AFP The World Bank is indirectly financing a boom in some of Asia’s dirtiest coal-fired power generation despite commitments to end most funding for the sector, a development advocacy group charged on Monday. The power plants, which contribute to climate change and deforestation as well as premature deaths due to illness, are cropping up from Bangladesh to ...

  New Delhi / AFP India’s Reliance Group and France’s Dassault have signed a lucrative defence partnership as part of a fighter jet deal agreed between the two nations last month, the companies said on Monday. India signed a contract to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets for 7.9 billion euros ($8.8 billion), France’s biggest ever such sale, as the nation ...

  BLOOMBERG Coal India Ltd.’s output fell year-on-year for a second consecutive month in September, signaling demand from power plants, its biggest consumers, remains weak. Production at the world’s biggest miner of the fuel declined 5.2 percent from a year earlier to 35.24 million metric tons in September, while shipments fell 6.6 percent to 37.74 million tons, according to data ...

  HANOI / AP Vietnamese authorities say they’ve seized 309 kilograms (682 pounds) of elephant tusks illegally imported from Nigeria. A customs official says the tusks were seized at Hanoi’s airport on Saturday. She said on Monday that the cargo had been declared as glass. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the ...

  MANILA / AP The Philippine economy may grow faster than expected if public infrastructure spending is increased as planned, the World Bank (WB) said on Monday. If that happened, the country’s economic growth may exceed the earlier forecasts of 6.4 percent this year and 6.2 percent in the next two years, the bank said. It also noted some businesses ...

  HONG KONG / AP The Chinese units of a former meat supplier for McDonald’s and KFC China have been fined more than $3.6 million for selling expired meat in a fast food safety scandal that erupted two years ago. It’s the latest fallout for OSI Group after a Shanghai TV station reported in 2014 that the company repackaged old ...

  Lagos / AFP Balogun Shakirat woke up with a start at 3:00 am and put on the light in her workshop in a crowded working class district of Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos. In the following three hours, she was able to sew shirts, trousers and a jacket. Then the electricity supply went off again. “No light the whole day ...