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Bloomberg Rabobank Groep, the biggest Dutch mortgage lender, recorded a 20 percent rise in full-year profit after loan impairment charges plunged in 2015. Net income jumped to 2.2 billion euros ($2.5 billion) from 1.8 billion euros for 2014, the closely held bank said in a statement on Thursday. Goodwill impairments fell 61 percent to 1 billion euros for the year ...

Bloomberg China’s central bank said it will start conducting open-market operations every business day, strengthening its influence on interest rates. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) introduced daily auctions from Jan. 29 to manage liquidity around the Lunar New Year holiday, a period in which surging demand for funds has led to cash squeezes in the past, and was due ...

Bloomberg Barclays Plc is considering selling its Egyptian unit after abandoning a plan to fold it into its Africa business, according to people with knowledge of the plan. The unit, whose presence in Egypt dates back to 1864, may be worth more than $500 million, according to one person familiar, who asked not to be identified because the details aren’t ...

Bloombrg Swedish inflation accelerated more than expected last month, easing pressure on the central bank to add to its record stimulus measures. Consumer prices rose an annual 0.8 percent in January, Statistics Sweden said in a statement Thursday. Adjusted for mortgage costs, prices rose an annual 1.6 percent. Analysts in a Bloomberg survey had predicted headline inflation of 0.5 percent ...

Bloombrg Vietnamese government bonds rose, pushing yields to six-month lows, on speculation demand from local banks increased as the cash supply improved after the Lunar New Year holidays. The yield on the five-year notes dropped 10 basis points to 6.5 percent, the lowest since Aug. 12, 2015, according to a daily fixing from lenders compiled by Bloomberg. The three-year yield ...

With the price of oil at record lows, the small Southeast Asian nation of Brunei is quickly becoming the first oil-rich country to fall victim to an economic reliance on the energy industry. The hydrocarbon-dependent sultanate of 420,000 people now stands on the precipice of an economic calamity. At the apex of its 2008-2015 financial crisis, Greece’s budget deficit was ...

Kyrgyzstan completed its accession to the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in August 2015, eight months after the union’s official launch and three months after Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev signed the agreements with the leaders of the other member states–Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Armenia–in Moscow. But as Oleg Pankratov, the deputy prime minister, said at a press conference this week, the ...

For decades after 1949, Hong Kong—also known as the “Pearl of the Orient”—was the envy of mainland Chinese because of its prosperity and freedom. It was naturally the top destination for hundreds of thousands of mainlanders who tried to flee from famine or political chaos. Hong Kong also used to evoke feelings of poignancy among mainlanders, because it was under ...

Riyadh / Bloomberg A record 47,431 rooms and 124 hotel projects are currently under development in Saudi Arabia, according to a new report. The majority of projects are in the final construction and pre-opening stages with 52 projects and almost 20,000 rooms set to open to the public throughout the Kingdom this year, says the new report by TOPHOTELPROJECTS commissioned ...

London / Bloomberg Buy-to-let landlords are rushing to purchase U.K. homes ahead of an increase in the stamp-duty sales tax in April. The number of homes acquired by rental homeowners rose 71 percent in January from the same month a year earlier, according to data compiled by Countrywide Plc. the U.K.’s largest realtor. Landlords purchased 21 percent of all the ...