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Bloomberg Egypt’s central bank is weighing tougher regulations on foreign-exchange dealers, part of a broader effort to crack down on the black market and to end a hard currency shortage that’s impeding economic growth. The bank wants to reduce the number of foreign-exchange bureaus from more than 140 and introduce measures to improve transparency, said a person familiar with the ...

BLOOMBERG The Philippines will hold accountable any bank or banker found responsible or remiss in their duties in the $81 million cyber heist of Bangladeshi foreign reserves that wound up in the Southeast Asian nation’s financial system, officials said. “You can be assured that banks that fail to perform their responsibilities will be held accountable,” Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Deputy ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank (ECB) began charging banks interest on deposits in June 2014 to encourage them to lend more to companies and consumers. It hasn’t worked. Deposits at the ECB by euro-area banks in excess of required reserves have jumped six-fold since the introduction of negative interest rates, while lending within the currency bloc has barely budged. Of ...

Doha / Emirates Business Investcorp, a leading provider and manager of alternative investment products, announced that its US-based real estate arm, through two separate transactions, has acquired five residential properties in the metropolitan areas of Boca Raton, Florida and Minneapolis, Minnesota for approximately $220mn. The acquisitions are consistent with Investcorp’s strategy to invest in desirable, high quality properties located in ...

Bloomberg U.K. house prices rose 1.3 percent in March, pushing the average above 300,000 pounds ($435,000) for the first time, according to Rightmove Plc. Average asking prices increased 7.6 percent compared with a year earlier, the property-website operator said on Monday. That takes the increase over the past 10 years to 50 percent, more than twice the pace of earnings ...

Dubai / Emirates Business Nine Elms Property Development Ltd, a subsidiary of DAMAC International Limited, has announced a re-branding of its premier residential project in London. AYKON Nine Elms, the 50-storey tower with interiors by Italian fashion house Versace, has been renamed AYKON London One, in a tribute to the skyscraper tower being the only ‘One’ in central London with ...

CAIRO / EMIRATES BUSINESS Egypt’s real estate developer SODIC signed sales contracts worth 4.4 billion Egyptian pounds (US$ 495.5million) during the financial year ended in December 2015, according to a source. SODIC , or Sixth of October Development and Investment Company revenues for the period reached 1.47 billion Egyptian pounds, while its net profit registered 321.331 million Egyptian pounds from ...

Bloomberg When Ethiopian farmer Mulugeta Mezemir ceded his land three years ago to property developers on the fringes of the expanding capital, Addis Ababa, he felt he had no choice. A gated community with white picket fences and mock Roman pillars built by Country Club Developers now occupies the fields he tilled in Legetafo, Oromia region, after the 60-year-old said ...

Bloomberg Casino Guichard-Perrachon was cut to junk by Standard and Poor’s, increasing the French grocer’s debt costs as short seller Carson Block attacks its accounting. The long-term debt rating was lowered by one step to BB+, the highest non-investment grade, Standard & Poor’s said in a statement on Monday. The outlook is stable. S&P had said it may lower it ...

Bloomberg Nigeria, reeling from the slump in oil prices, has asked domestic and international airlines for discounts as it seeks to cap travel expenses that are its biggest source of overhead costs, the Finance Ministry said in a statement that was issued last week. A “conservative” 5 percent reduction on airfare tickets would save the West African government about 4 ...