Estonia says Nato’s unity an unpleasant surprise for Russia

  Bloomberg Nato’s unity in confronting the potential threat against Ukraine has been a negative surprise for Russia, and Europe must be strategic with sanctions in case of an attack, Estonia’s prime minister said. Premier Kaja Kallas said that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions in Ukraine still aren’t clear as his government masses forces across the border from its former ...

Read More »

Russian media is focused more on Nato than Ukraine

  Bloomberg With international tensions high over the Kremlin’s massing of troops towards its border with Ukraine, there’s an important difference from the way Russian media treated a similar build-up last year: Moscow’s main focus now is Nato, rather than Kyiv. The conclusion comes from a new data analysis of articles in “.ru” Internet domain names by Semantic Visions, a ...

Read More »

‘Partygate’: Johnson under fire from Tories

  Bloomberg UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced fresh fury from his Conservative lawmakers after a report into partying in Downing Street during lockdown slammed “failures of leadership and judgment” at the top of his government and criticized “excessive” drinking. London’s Metropolitan Police is now investigating 12 lockdown gatherings in government buildings, including in Johnson’s own apartment, and said Monday ...

Read More »

Drought in Ethiopia leaves millions needing urgent aid, UN says

  Bloomberg Severe drought has led to millions of people needing humanitarian assistance across four regions in Ethiopia, according to the United Nations. Three failed rainy seasons have devastated livestock and crops in provinces including Afar and Oromia in the Horn of Africa nation, and about 6.8 million people will need emergency aid by the middle of the year, Unicef ...

Read More »

OCBC completes goodwill payouts to phishing victims

  Bloomberg Overseas-Chinese Banking Corp (OCBC) said it made $10.1 million in goodwill payouts to 790 customers who fell prey to an text message phishing scam impersonating the lender. About 80% of the amount lost occurred during December 23-30 festive period, at which time calls to the bank’s contact center surged by over 40%, OCBC said. A previous figure that ...

Read More »

UBS boosts buyback, targets after beat at investment bank

  Bloomberg UBS Group AG increased its share buyback program and upgraded key profit and efficiency targets after rising capital market and trading revenues drove better-than-expected results at the investment bank. Switzerland’s largest lender, which also beat analyst forecasts for profit and revenue, will buy back as much as $5 billion of shares this year, almost doubling its total buyback ...

Read More »

Payments firm SumUp seeks new funds at $22 billion value

  Bloomberg SumUp is considering raising new money in a funding round that could value the UK payments company at about 20 billion euros ($22.6 billion), according to people familiar with the matter. London-based SumUp could seek more than 500 million euros from investors, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private. A fundraising of ...

Read More »

Australia central bank scraps bond buying

  Bloomberg Australia’s central bank has signalled it’ll remain at the dovish end of the global policy spectrum even as it ended one of its crisis-era tools. The Aussie dollar and bond yields whipsawed as markets that had bet on accelerated interest-rate tightening digested Governor Philip Lowe’s pledge to remain patient in assessing inflation. Lowe, who announced a scrapping of ...

Read More »

Some African central banks to hold rates

  Bloomberg Central banks in some of Africa’s biggest economies will likely look past high inflation and US policy tightening and hold interest rates over the coming weeks to shore up their recoveries from the Covid-19 stasis. Since monetary policy makers on the continent last met, US consumer prices soared to a near four-decade high, setting the stage for the ...

Read More »
Send this to a friend