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Moody’s Corp. downgraded China’s sovereign credit rating for the first time in 28 years. In doing so, the rating agency is acknowledging the dragon in the room: China will have to pay the price for its epic debt binge, whatever policymakers do from here. The burning question in China these days is whether the government is serious about tackling the ...

UK police investigating the Manchester terror attack say they have stopped sharing information with the US after a series of leaks. Since the beginning of this century, the US intelligence services and their clients have acted as if they wanted the world to know they couldn’t guarantee the confidentiality of any information that falls into their hands. At this point, ...

Bloomberg It usually doesn’t work this way: stocks vaulting to records, and bearish traders getting more aggressive. Lately, it has. The S&P 500 Index has climbed 7.9 percent since January, including its biggest gain since April in the just-completed week. At the same time, short interest as a proportion of total shares outstanding has also expanded, rising by 0.3 percentage ...

Dubai / Emirates Business SWIFT announces on Sunday that Mashreq Bank has signed up for its global payments innovation (gpi) service, to become the first bank in the Middle East to join this international initiative. The bank will be joining forces with 100 leading banks globally. SWIFT gpi dramatically improves the customer experience in cross-border payments by increasing the speed, ...

Dubai / Emirates Business Noor Bank, a leading Shari’a-compliant bank in the UAE, announced that it joined the region’s prominent financial, legal and insurance institutions as a Gold Sponsor at the latest edition of the Bonds, Loans & Sukuk Middle East conference. Organised by GFC Media Group, the region’s largest finance and investment conference convenes high-profile issuers, investors, bankers, legal ...

Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. will pay bigger sign-on bonuses to some new brokers as competitors including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. seek to reduce recruitment inducements. The Wells Fargo Advisors unit plans to offer better pay packages to brokers who oversee the largest books of business as it seeks to woo more big producers, reports said. The ...

Bloomberg The South African Reserve Bank left its key rate unchanged for a seventh straight meeting as policy makers warned politics and ratings downgrades could still knock the rand and scupper an improving inflation outlook. The Monetary Policy Committee maintained the benchmark repurchase rate at 7 percent, Governor Lesetja Kganyago told reporters in the capital, Pretoria. The decision was in ...

Bloomberg Alan Tay Yeow Kee, a former CIMB Group Holdings Bhd. banker, admitted to insider trading on two stocks before the companies received takeover offers. Tay, 41, pleaded guilty to trading on price-sensitive information in a Singapore State Court and was fined S$180,000 ($130,000). He bought shares in Qualitas Medical Group Ltd. and welding products supplier Leeden Ltd. in 2011 ...

Bloomberg Creditors of Azerbaijan’s biggest bank are taking steps to block terms outlined by the lender earlier this week in a $3.3 billion debt restructuring, according to two members of the investor group. Debtholders of the International Bank of Azerbaijan are arguing their voting rights were diluted by the inclusion in the restructuring of a $1 billion deposit owed to ...

Bloomberg British Airways (BA) said it will try to operate most scheduled departures from London on Sunday, after a computer system failure paralyzed operations at the start of a three-day holiday weekend in the UK, stranding thousands of travelers at two major airports. The carrier scrapped all Saturday afternoon and evening departures from Heathrow and Gatwick airports following what it called ...