April, 2016

• 18 April

  Spain’s Caixabank to launch full takeover offer for Banco BPI

  

    MADRID / REUTERS Spain’s Caixabank said on Monday it would launch a full takeover bid for the 56 percent of Portuguese lender Banco BPI that it does not already own for 1.113 euros ($1.26) per share. The offer was dependent on acceptance topping 50 percent and the Portuguese bank eliminating a 20 percent shareholder rights limitation, the Spanish bank ...

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• 18 April

  Saudi’s Arab National Bank Q1 profit beats forecasts despite 2.8pc dip

  

    REUTERS Arab National Bank, Saudi Arabia’s seventh-largest lender by assets value, reported a 2.8 percent fall in first-quarter profit, but still beat analysts’ forecasts. Net profit in the three months to March 31 was 749.2 million riyals ($199.8 million), compared to 770.6 million riyals in the corresponding period of the previous year, it said in a bourse statement. Four ...

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• 18 April

  CDC Group of UK in talks to buy stake in I&M

  

    Bloomberg CDC Group Plc is seeking to purchase a 10.68 percent stake in I&M Holdings Ltd. of Kenya through a private share transfer, the lender said. The UK-based development finance institution entered into a conditional agreement to buy shares held by Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft and Proparco, which have 6.25 percent and 4.43 percent respectively, according to a statement ...

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• 18 April

  Draghi putting ECB stimulus back on agenda

  

  BLOOMBERG No sooner will Mario Draghi return from his summer vacation than he’ll be looking to boost euro-area stimulus yet again, economists predict. Despite unprecedented measures by the European Central Bank (ECB) president so far, a survey of 47 analysts who cover the institution showed more than 60 percent think he isn’t yet done. The most likely date for fresh ...

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• 18 April

  China home-price gains spread as demand spur

  

    Bloomberg China’s home-price gains accelerated last month as the nation’s economic hubs such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen continued to lead the way amid surging liquidity that underpinned demand. New-home prices excluding government-subsidized housing climbed in 62 cities, compared with 47 in February, among the 70 cities tracked by the government, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. ...

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• 18 April

  Chinese developers prudent on 2016 sales

  

    Bloomberg Chinese developers set conservative goals for sales in 2016, indicating that they expect property growth to slow after a period of credit-fueled expansion. Twenty-two major Chinese developers set a combined contracted sales goal at 1.3 trillion yuan ($201 billion) this year, representing an 8.8 percent gain from the sales value they reached in 2015, according to data compiled ...

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• 18 April

  London quarterly home sales drop 33% as tax rises

  

    Bloomberg Demand for London homes under construction slumped by 33 percent in the first quarter as a new tax on overseas buyers and high values damped demand. The number of homes sold prior to completion in the U.K. capital fell to 5,947 from a record high of 8,927 a year earlier, according to data compiled by Molior London that ...

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• 18 April

  UK house prices up as land lords spark chain reaction

  

    Bloomberg U.K. house prices climbed to a record in April as demand from landlords in the previous month created knock-on effects through the property market, according to Rightmove Plc. Average asking prices rose 1.3 percent from March to 307,033 pounds ($437,000), the property website operator said in a report published Monday. It left values 7.3 percent higher than a ...

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• 18 April

  Immofinanz, CA Immo to merge after bids fail

  

    Bloomberg Immofinanz AG and CA Immobilien Anlagen AG plan to merge in a transaction that would create the biggest commercial property group in central and eastern Europe, following a hostile takeover battle that ended without a deal last year. Immofinanz agreed to buy a 26 percent stake in CA Immo from Russian billionaire Boris Mints’s O1 Group Ltd. in ...

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• 18 April

  Confidence high as Canadians keep faith in housing

  

    Bloomberg Canadians are looking past signs of damage from low energy prices and predicting the housing surge will continue. According to weekly polling by Nanos Research, the share of respondents expecting higher real estate prices reached the most since December 2014 last week, or 38.7%. That pushed the Bloomberg Nanos Consumer Confidence Index to 54.7 last week, the highest ...

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