December, 2016

• 27 December

  Italian bank BMPS says ECB sees need for $9.2bn of capital

  

    Bloomberg The European Central Bank sees Italian lender Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA needing about 8.8 billion euros ($9.2 billion) of capital to bolster its balance sheet after liquidity deteriorated this month. The calculation is based on the results of a 2016 stress test, the Italian bank said in a statement, citing two letters from the ECB ...

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• 27 December

  Bundesbank’s prez warns of hasty rescue for Monte Paschi

  

    Bloomberg Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said the bar should be high for government funds being used in a rescue of Italian lender Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA. Government funds are intended as a “last resort,” Weidmann said in an interview with German newspaper Bild, with the banker adding that planned measures by the Italian government should only ...

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• 27 December

  Deutsche rises on US mortgage fraud deal

  

    Reuters European shares were steady with the focus on lenders after Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse settled mortgage securities fraud suits in the United States, and Italy’s Monte dei Paschi agreed to a bailout. The STOXX Europe 600 was flat at its close and unchanged for the week, but the index still on track for its best month since ...

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• 27 December

  Iran’s rial at all-time low over strong dollar

  

    TEHRAN / AP At money changers across Tehran, shouting voices accompany each change of the signboards out front showing the value of the Iranian rial, which slips ever lower against the US dollar. This week saw Iran’s currency fall to 41,600 rials to $1, its lowest point ever. While making Iranian exports more attractive to the world market in ...

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• 27 December

  China promotes Yin Yong as PBOC deputy governor

  

    Bloomberg China promoted Yin Yong to deputy governor of the central bank from assistant governor and named Liu Guoqiang as an assistant governor of the monetary authority. People’s Bank of China Deputy Governor Guo Qingping and assistant governor Yang Ziqiang will step down, according to a statement on the State Council’s website without giving further details. Yin worked for ...

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• 27 December

  Alma in wonderland!

  

    Vienna / DPA Music comes to Alma Deutscher when she dreams. “I sometimes get a melody in the middle of the night. Then I wake up and I sneak out of bed and I write it down in my notebook,” the British girl says. Like many 11-year-olds, Alma also has a vivid imagination when she is awake, but unlike ...

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• 27 December

  Exiled Paraguay’s Ache people want land

  

    Puerto Barra / AFP Forced from their ancestral forests by the arrival of big agriculture in eastern Paraguay, the Ache people gave up the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that had sustained them for centuries. Now they have taken up farming themselves — and they want their old land back. The Ache’s homeland was remade in the 1970s by the mass arrival ...

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• 27 December

  Banks boost Saudi to a high for year, rest of Gulf sluggish

  

    Reuters Banking shares boosted Saudi Arabia’s stock index on Tuesday to its highest level this year, while other Gulf markets moved little in quiet trade with some foreign investors absent for New Year holidays. The Saudi index closed up 1.3 percent at 7,257 points in its highest trading volume for two weeks, rising above technical resistance at this year’s ...

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• 27 December

  Toshiba and Italian banks ripple calm markets

  

    London / AFP A plunge in the share price of Toshiba over a possible write-down and the bailout of one of Italy’s top banks were the biggest ripples in otherwise placid trading on Tuesday. “Markets are calm, as thin holiday volumes are in play,” said market analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya at London Capital Group. However a 12 percent meltdown in ...

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• 27 December

  Shale specter haunts OPEC as oil seen rallying into 2017

  

    Bloomberg After pulling off the biggest oil-market deal in a decade, OPEC faces a new balancing act in 2017: boosting prices without igniting shale. The first shale boom spurred a global supply glut that started prices sliding in mid-2014, and was amplified that November by a pump-at-will OPEC strategy aimed at market dominance. During the ensuing rout, prices in ...

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