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ABU DHABI / EMIRATES BUSINESS The Emirates Securities Market Index has decreased by -1.18% to close at 4450.65 points. Accordingly the Market Capitalization has lost AED 8.59 billion attaining AED 721.95 billion. A total of 0.52 Billion Shares were traded with a total value of AED 0.61 billion during the trading session of 24-03-2016 through 7186 transactions. The number of companies which ...

TOKYO / Reuters Bank of Japan (BOJ) policymakers engaged in heated debate during their policy review in March on the pros and cons of their decision in January to adopt negative interest rates, with one even saying it was preferable to roll it back. A summary of the March 14-15 meeting of the nine-member board that was released on Thursday showed ...

Sydney / AFP ANZ Bank on Thursday warned sour loans will cost it at least A$900 million in the first-half, and analysts warned of more trouble ahead as slumping commodity prices squeeze Australia’s resources companies. The bank said weakness in the mining and energy sectors means it now expects bad debts to cost A$100 million ($75 million) more in the ...

Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank (SNB) spent 86.1 billion francs ($88 billion) on interventions last year, a measure of its efforts to shield the economy from deflation. SNB President Thomas Jordan and his colleagues have repeatedly pledged to step in to prevent the franc from strengthening. They’ve done so even since they gave up a minimum exchange rate of 1.20 ...

Milan / AFP Italian banks Banco Popolare and Banca Popolare di Milano (BPM) have announced that they would merge, in a long-awaited deal that will create the country’s third-largest bank by assets. The deal will create a lender with more than 25,000 staff and four million customers, and could help drive consolidation among Italy’s fragmented bankingsector. The deal has been ...

TORONTO / Reuters Bank of Montreal (BMO), Canada’s fourth largest lender, has announced that it had launched the first biometric corporate card programme in Canada and US in partnership with Mastercard. BMO and Mastercard said the technology will enable cardholders to verify transactions using facial recognition and fingerprint biometrics when making online purchases. In a statement, they said the introduction ...

Bloomberg Tahya Masr (Long Live Egypt) Fund, initiated by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is set to deliver the first and second phases of a social housing project tailored for slum residents in April. The Tahya Masr social housing project is to include 15,000 housing units to place 60,000 slum residents, said Manal Shaheen, the fund’s General Director of Development Projects. ...

Bloomberg A research unit of China’s central bank branch in Shenzhen asked commercial banks in the city to strengthen risk-control practices on household mortgage loans as property prices have soared. Mortgage leverage in Shenzhen has been far higher than in other first-tier cities since 2015, and has accumulated risks, according to the statement from the Financial Society of Shenzhen Special ...

Bloomberg Buyers from China comprised about one-third of purchases of Vancouver’s hot housing market in 2015, according to “back of the envelope calculations” by National Bank of Canada. Chinese investors spent about C$12.7 billion ($9.6 billion) on real estate in the western Canadian city in 2015, or 33 percent of its C$38.5 billion in total sales, according to a note ...

Bloomberg Hainan Airlines Co., the biggest private airline in China, reported a 15.9 percent jump in full-year profit as cheaper oil prices drove down costs and passenger numbers increased. Billionaire Chen Feng’s airline reported net income of 3 billion yuan ($460.6 million) last year compared with 2.6 billion yuan in 2014, the Haikou, Hainan-based company said in a Shanghai stock ...