January, 2018

• 23 January

  Citi gets Saudi go-ahead for investment banking

  

  DUBAI / Reuters Citigroup has won formal approval from Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market Authority to begin investment banking business there, the US bank said on Tuesday. More than a dozen foreign banks have licences to operate branches in Saudi Arabia, battling for business resulting from the kingdom’s reforms to wean its economy off oil revenues. Citi was among the banks ...

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• 23 January

  Kuroda: BOJ tightening ‘not so fast’

  

  Bloomberg Governor Haruhiko Kuroda delivered a message to investors speculating that the Bank of Japan might be nearing the start of policy normalisation: Not so fast. Kuroda said the BOJ wasn’t in a position to even consider exiting its current policy, after it maintained its massive stimulus program and kept its inflation and economic forecasts unchanged earlier on Tuesday. “Given ...

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• 23 January

  African Development Bank to add $2bn to Nigeria loans

  Bloomberg The African Development Bank plans to increase its loans to Nigeria by more than $2 billion next year with investments in energy, infrastructure and agriculture, its President Akinwumi Adesina said. “The total portfolio we have in Nigeria is $6 billion,” Adesina said in a Jan. 18 interview in Abuja, the capital. “We expect that by the year 2019, we ...

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• 23 January

  Foreign currency trade on Egypt banks soar to $14.5bn

  

  Bloomberg Foreign-currency trading on Egypt’s interbank system has climbed to $14.5 billion since the November 2016 decision to float the currency, central bank Governor Tarek Amer told Bloomberg. Bank trading in dollars — almost non-existent before the float — had reached $9 billion in September. The 60 percent rise since then reflects growing confidence in the economy after reforms aimed ...

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• 23 January

  Banks, fintech firms see ‘war of talent’

  

  Bloomberg Europe’s financial technology startups are on hiring mode, fighting each other – and the incumbents — in what one executive described as a “war for talent.” Payments company GoCardless Ltd., which employs 170 people in London, will open a Paris office in February, said chief product and technology officer Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas. Online lender LendInvest Ltd. said it will make ...

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• 23 January

  Tencent to back Carrefour in challenge to Alibaba in retail

  

  Bloomberg Tencent Holdings Ltd. plans to invest in Carrefour SA’s China unit, following Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s footsteps to uproot traditional grocery and department stores with technology. The social media giant, along with local retailer Yonghui Superstores, agreed to take a stake in Carrefour China, the companies said. They plan to work together on data, retail, mobile payments and data ...

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• 23 January

  AirAsia to buy more jets to meet demand

  

  BLoomberg AirAsia Bhd., the budget airline that has grown to become one of the biggest customers of Airbus SE planes, could consider buying more aircraft as economic expansion across India, China and the Southeast Asian nations propel travel demand across the continent. “Right now, we are short of aircraft,” Tony Fernandes, AirAsia group chief executive officer, said in an interview ...

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• 23 January

  Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner wins federal approval

  

  Bloomberg Boeing Co.’s newest and largest 787 Dreamliner got the federal approval it needs to fly commercially, winning authorisation before the recent US government shutdown. The certification concludes a flight-test programme that began last March for the first of the 787-10 carbon-fibre jets to be assembled solely at Boeing’s South Carolina factory, the Chicago-based planemaker said. That clears one of two ...

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• 23 January

  Airbus gets pre-delivery payments from Hainan Air

  Bloomberg Airbus SE has received “hundreds of millions of dollars” in pre-delivery payments from carriers under the Hainan Airlines Holding Co. umbrella and is sufficiently protected from any financial risks involving the customer, John Leahy, the European planemaker’s chief of sales, said. “We build airplanes so you’d have an industrial risk if they were to get into some serious financial ...

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• 23 January

  H&M investor heads for exit as selloff tests crisis point

  

  Bloomberg One of H&M’s largest shareholders has lost its patience. Skandia’s actively managed funds have spent the past months selling off most of its stake in Hennes & Mauritz AB after watching the fashion retailer struggle with weakening sales in its physical stores and intensifying online competition. The Swedish savings and insurance giant says there’s a raft of issues H&M ...

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