DUBAI / Reuters The Gulf’s largest listed lender, Qatar National Bank (QNB), said on Sunday it would open a representative office in Cuba, becoming the first bank from the rich energy-exporting countries of the Gulf to do so. Government-controlled QNB has obtained regulatory approvals needed to open the office, in line with its strategy of expanding in selected countries, ...

  Bloomberg The European Central Bank (ECB) added a digit to its odometer to read 1,000,000,000,000. Euros, not kilometers. That’s the amount of excess liquidity now sloshing through the financial system — equivalent to almost 3,000 euros ($3,360) for each of the 340 million people in the 19-nation region. The money is created by the ECB through a program of ...

  Bloomberg Poland favours government-controlled insurer PZU SA as the buyer for Bank Pekao SA, the country’s second-largest bank held by Italy’s UniCredit SpA, with the price representing the main hurdle, Finance Minister Pawel Szalamacha said. Speaking to Bloomberg at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy, Szalamacha said his government backs a possible deal but insisted this was up to ...

  Bloomberg One of Hong Kong’s potentially most lucrative initial public offerings in recent years has bankers facing some difficult choices. Anbang Insurance Group Co., known for its aborted $14 billion attempt to buy Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., has asked investment banks to pitch for roles on an IPO of its life insurance assets. While the recent dearth ...

  Hangzhou / AFP The US said on Sunday it had not yet struck a hoped-for deal with Russia on stemming the violence in Syria’s brutal civil war, blaming Moscow for backtracking on issues it thought were settled. President Barack Obama said earlier that the two sides were “working around the clock” on the sidelines of a summit in China, but ...

  Hangzhou / AFP The United States is committed to bringing the perpetrators of the attempted coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to justice, President Barack Obama said on Sunday. Ankara accuses US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen of being behind the July uprising. At talks with Erdogan on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Obama said: “We will make sure that ...

  Dhaka / AFP Bangladesh has executed a tycoon and top financier for the largest radical party for war crimes, dealing a major blow to its ambitions in the troubled Muslim-majority country. Mir Quasem Ali, a key leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, was hanged late Saturday after being convicted by a controversial war crimes tribunal of murder and abduction during the 1971 independence ...

  Ankara / AFP Turkish warplanes have destroyed 10 Kurdish rebel positions in the restive southeast as Ankara steps up its fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), state media reported on Sunday. Jets bombed four PKK targets in the Cukurca district of the southeastern province of Hakkari close to northern Iraq on Saturday evening, security sources told state-run Anadolu ...

  Kandahar / AFP At least 35 people were killed on Sunday when a bus collided with a fuel tanker and burst into flames in southern Afghanistan, in the latest road accident in the war-torn country. Many of the victims, including women and children, were burned beyond recognition in the accident in Zabul province, one of the areas worst hit by ...

  Schwerin / AFP Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party braced for a backlash at state polls on Sunday, while anti-migrant populists are poised for major gains a year after the German leader opened the borders to refugees. Around 1.33 million voters are electing a new regional parliament for the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which is also home to Merkel’s constituency Stralsund. ...