September, 2016

• 18 September

  RBS shares hit after Deutsche Bank fined

  

    Reuters Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) shares fell after U.S. authorities demanded $14 billion from Deutsche Bank to settle mis-selling claims, raising fears about how much RBS might have to pay for similar misconduct. The British state-backed lender has waited many months to hear how U.S. authorities including the Department of Justice (DoJ) and Federal Housing Finance Agency intend ...

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• 18 September

  Banking clampdown dims allure of scandal-hit Baltic haven

  

    Bloomberg Many Latvians got a shock this summer when they were informed their bank accounts risked being blocked if they didn’t hand over details of their citizenship, financial plans and any ties to high-level politics. Demands to fill out online questionnaires were dispatched by lenders at the behest of financial regulators, who’ve been battling the Baltic nation’s reputation as ...

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• 18 September

  Warning indicator for China banking stress climbs to record

    Bloomberg A warning indicator for banking stress rose to a record in China in the first quarter, underscoring risks to the nation and the world from a rapid build-up of Chinese corporate debt. China’s credit-to-gross domestic product “gap” stood at 30.1 percent, the highest for the nation in data stretching back to 1995, according to the Basel-based Bank for ...

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• 18 September

  Deutsche Bank investors fret its legal reserves won’t be enough

  

    Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG is moving closer to settling one of its biggest legal cases. How it manages to pay will depend on whether it can persuade the U.S. to lower its initial request of $14 billion, and by how much. The shares of Germany’s biggest bank plunged on news the Department of Justice is seeking an amount that’s ...

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• 18 September

  Why China’s beating Japan in battle for mind share

  

  Shinzo Abe’s recent promise of $30 billion in financing to African countries over the next three years shouldn’t have come as a great surprise. Quietly, over decades, Japan has become the leading financier of growth-supporting infrastructure across large swathes of the developing world. Perhaps too quietly. In fact, few people outside the country appreciate the scope of Japan’s overseas development ...

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• 18 September

  The new globalization is smashing internal borders

    Trade agreements are stalled or collapsing. Brexit won. World trade volume is slowing down. Has globalization hit a wall? Not exactly. Globalization isn’t so much slowing as it is taking new forms. The most potent form of globalization today is occurring inside nations, notably China and India. Globalization typically is defined as the movement of goods, services, ideas, labor ...

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• 18 September

  Nationalists in the East could reshape Europe

  

    The European Union has never been homogeneous, but recent policy clashes and particularly the immigration issue are making its split into three sub-blocs — the North, the South and the East — increasingly visible. Two strongmen, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s ruling party, make no secret of trying to create an axis for ...

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• 18 September

  Clashes at Libyan oil ports as counter-attack repelled

  

    Reuters Eastern Libyan forces said they had reestablished control over two oil ports where an ousted faction launched a counter-attack on Sunday, briefly seizing one of the terminals. The two ports, Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, were among four seized by forces loyal to eastern commander Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) on Sept. 11-12 from a Petroleum Facilities ...

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• 18 September

  Israel PM defends US aid package in face of criticism

    Jerusalem / AFP Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday defended a new $38 billion US defence aid package against criticism Israel could have negotiated a larger sum had he not angered the White House. Speaking at the start of a cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the deal was the “largest assistance agreement that the United States has ever provided to ...

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• 18 September

  Four scenarios for oil producers as they seek to boost prices

    Bloomberg A meeting in Algiers at the end of September between OPEC and Russia — which together pump more than half the world’s oil — has raised expectations that a deal could be struck to boost prices. Oil is still trading at half its 2014 level amid a persistent global oversupply. While a production decline in the U.S. has ...

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