Missing vintage rally pilot turns up in South Sudan

  Nairobi / AFP A maverick 72-year-old British pilot taking part in a vintage air rally turned up in South Sudan on Saturday after going missing for a second time when the event arrived in Kenya. Maurice Kirk is one of about a dozen pilots flying vintage biplanes across Africa, but has repeatedly run foul of organisers for failing to ...

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Airline workers enjoy good times amid doubt resurgence will last

  Bloomberg US airlines are posting record profits, awarding hefty pay raises and winning over longtime skeptics like Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The missing ingredient: proof that the industry can weather a downturn. Previous airline booms were followed by busts that eventually forced all the biggest full-service airlines into bankruptcy. The difference this time is an eight-year era of ...

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National Bank of Greece seeks better bids before selling loans

  Bloomberg National Bank of Greece SA, the country’s oldest lender, will only consider selling batches of bad loans to distressed debt managers once country risk recedes and bids improve, Chief Executive Officer Leonidas Fragkiadakis said. “We are actively talking to people. As of now there is no closing-in of agreements I can report,” Fragkiadakis said in the interview from ...

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Australian banks admit to ringgit cartel

  Sydney / AFP Australian banks ANZ and Macquarie agreed to pay Aus$15 million (US$11 million) in fines for trying to manipulate the benchmark rate of the Malaysian ringgit. ANZ admitted to 10 instances of attempted cartel conduct and Macquarie to eight relating to setting the daily rates for derivative instruments linked to Malaysia’s currency in 2011. The Australian Competition ...

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Saudi Hollandi Bank is now ‘Alawwal Bank’

  DUBAI /Reuters Saudi Hollandi Bank said it would change its name to Alawwal Bank as part of a new corporate identity that will be rolled out over the next three months. Alawwal, meaning “The First” in Arabic, references the bank’s status as the first bank to launch in the country in 1926. The name change coincides with Royal Bank ...

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Wells Fargo wants claims over fake accounts decided out of court

  Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. is trying to keep dozens of customers suing over bogus accounts opened by its employees out of court, saying they agreed to resolve any disputes in arbitration when they began doing business with the bank. The lender also asked for the lawsuits, filed by 80 customers in federal court in Salt Lake City to ...

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China bad-loan disposal no easy task with slowdown

  Bloomberg Tougher economic conditions and overcapacity in the steel, coal and cement sectors are making it harder and less profitable for China’s bad-loan managers to dispose of soured credits, according to a survey. Only 4 percent of 101 respondents at the nation’s distressed asset-management firms said they found it “easy” or “relatively easy” to dispose of bad loans, China ...

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IDB seeks strategic stake in Turkey’s Borsa Istanbul

  Reuters The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) will seek a strategic stake in Turkey’s main stock exchange and collaborate on developing a gold trading platform for use by majority-Muslim countries, part of a broad agreement signed on Thursday. The Saudi-based IDB did not specify a size or timeframe for the acquisition of share capital in Borsa Istanbul, but said in ...

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Tech to tackle overfishing, labour abuse at sea

  BANGKOK / AP Fishing boats used high-tech systems to find vast schools of fish for decades, depleting stocks of some species and leading to the complete collapse of others. Now more than a dozen apps, devices and monitoring systems aimed at tracking unscrupulous vessels and the seafood they catch are being rolled out — high-tech solutions some say could ...

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A ‘virtual’ revamp for the way we eat in 2017

  Relaxnews Virtual restaurants are predicted to be one of the biggest trends to define the food and dining landscape in 2017, according to a trendspot- ting report. After the “Uberization” of food delivery, experts at the New York-based consultancy group Baum + Whiteman predict that “restaurants without seats, and seats without restaurants” will become increasingly popular and add another ...

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