Category: Banking & Finance

By K RaveendranThe ongoing investigations into the sensational case of gold smuggling through the diplomatic channel provide a live example of the nexus between gold, drugs, dirty money and havala. All preliminary findings point to a ‘standard operating procedure’ followed across the world by the underworld, as highlighted in what has been called the FinCEN files, just published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).Law enforcement has long seen gold trade as a key vulnerability in the global fight

By Hassan Ali MansoorLike a raging bull, Covid-19 has swept through the world. Besides infecting millions of people and resulting in the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, it has also brought the global economy to a standstill and disrupted existing projections of capital markets and cash liquidity.Banks and financial institutions have been forced to review their existing policies and projections, governments around the world have offered stimulus packages to business to remain afloat, and a sense of panic

Non-Residential Indians (NRIs) and Person of Indian Origin (PIO) have several banking needs that are difficult to be served by any regular bank account. Since these people reside abroad, they generally have their savings and income in foreign denominations such as US Dollars, Euros, etc. Therefore, such individuals need a different account to suit their requirements.NRI accounts have distinctive facilities for amount transfers, tax-related issues, currency denominations, and more. Before one dives deeper into these facilities, one needs to understand

The foreign exchange market is gaining in popularity as more exposure of how it works spreads online. It is the world’s most traded market, turning over more than $5 trillion every day and it is openly accessible and relatively easy to start. One of the key attractions of forex is that the market operates 24 hours a day. There isn’t any one centralized place for forex - it operates in whichever market is open at the time and isn’t constrained

|By Arabian Post Staff| IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and the IFC Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Fund, a fund managed by IFC Asset Management Company, LLC (AMC), are investing $19 million in equity in Yellow Door Energy. The investment will support the deployment of lease-to-own rooftop and ground-mounted solar-power and energy-efficiency solutions to commercial and industrial customers in Jordan, UAE, and beyond.The investment is part of a $65 million financing package that Yellow Door Energy is raising from a group of investors.

Saxo Group India, part of the Saxo Bank Group, has expanded its presence with the move to a new and bigger office in Gurugram to accommodate future growth with a plan to increase headcount by 20 % in 2018. Established through an acquisition in 2010, Saxo Group India employs more than 500 people primarily within IT and operations. The organisation in Gurugram works with Saxo Bank’s headquarter in Copenhagen as one team to continuously improve the core of the Bank which

|By Arabian Post Staff| Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) and seven leading global Central Securities Depository (CSD) companies to collaborate on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) implementation in post trade operations, as well as capital market transactions.Today, securities processing, particularly in areas requiring multi-party contact and involving extremely cumbersome manual processes carry significant inherent cost and risk. As a part of the MOU, SWIFT and the

|By Arabian Post Staff| After posting a 10 per cent year-on-year rise in MENA region profits in 2017, Saxo Bank, the online multi-asset trading and investment specialist, has consolidated its high-performing Dubai station as its regional hub of operations. The double-digit annual profit growth across the region, which has elevated MENA to the company’s third most profitable operation this year, had led Saxo’s Head of MENA, Mario Camara, to predict a “bullish” forecast for further growth in 2018 - a year when

|By Arabian Post Staff| National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah (RAKBank) Group said the bank's profit for the third quarter more than doubled to Dh224.8 million, compared to the previous period and recorded all-round improvement in its 9 months performance, achieving a growth of  9.4 per cent in the consolidated net profit of Dh606.3 million. Gross loans and advances stood at Dh32.6 billion as of 30 September 2017, up by 12.5 per cent compared with the same period last year. Total

|By Arabian Post Staff| Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank  reported net profit of AED 3.206 billion for the nine month period ended 30 September 2017. The figure was 2% higher than the the previous level.Total net interest income and Islamic financing income of AED 4.983 billion was up 8% while operating income of AED 6.585 billion was up 4%, and operating expenses of AED 2.147 billion was also up 4%, which resulted in a stable cost to income ratio of 32.6%

|By Arabian Post Staff| Leading UAE bank FGB has successfully concluded one of Abu Dhabi’s first Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) aircraft financing deals, in collaboration with Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM).The financing deals were part of ADGM’s innovative SPV regime, and were arranged to refinance two Etihad A380 aircraft bridge financings which were maturing in December 2016 and originally financed by FGB.Natixis Leasing secured the bid for both aircrafts, one of which was subsequently part-financed by FGB under a USD

|By Arabian Post Staff|Leading UAE bank FGB has launched the UAE’s first Wealth Sentiment Index, which measures the prevailing mood of affluent investors in the UAE market, from a personal and business point of view. The index will serve as an indicator of the overall sentiment of the market, based on existing fundamental and economic factors.The new index was launched during FGB’s fourth annual Investment Conference, which featured sessions led by a host of renowned global financial experts who provided insights

|By Arabian Post Staff| The three-month Saudi Interbank Offered Rate, or Saibor, used as a benchmark to price loans, has climbed 15 successive months to the highest in seven years, Bloomberg reported.It gained 84 basis points this year to 2.385 percent on Sunday, compared with a 27 basis-point advance in the London Interbank Offered Rate for dollars. Meanwhile, the loans-to-deposit ratio among Saudi banks, a key measure of liquidity, rose to 90.8 percent in August, the worst since 2008.The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency

|By Arabian Post Staff| The Dubai Islamic Economy Development Centre is in the process of developing a National Bonds Sukuk Trading Platform, which uses assets in the local economy to structure Shariah-compliant consumer financing.This is pat of the initiative to develop new strategies to meet the liquidity management and personal financing needs of Islamic banks and Islamic windows at conventional banks. These products are expected to address both the operational needs of Islamic banks and the preferences of their customers

|By Arabian Post Staff| Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, which bought Barclays Plc’s UAE retail business, has cut more than 200 jobs over the past three months, Bloomberg reported quoting some people.The cuts were made mostly in the retail business, the report said. About 100 people were dismissed last month, with the layoffs mostly affecting junior staff, one of the people said. A spokesman for the bank, which employs about 2,500 people across the country, said the bank doesn’t comment on

|By Arabian Post Staff| Switching from conventional ‘Western’ financial practices to Islamic banking gives distinct advantages to banks, with the change improving the liquidity and value of stocks, a study of the merger between a Bahrian Islamic bank and a conventional bank revealed.Researchers at the Universities of Birmingham and Brighton studied a merger that took place in Bahrain, between an Islamic bank and a conventional bank in the wake of financial crises that rocked the world between 2007 and 2009.Their

|By Arabian Post Staff| There is a growing digital divide between those wealth managers who offer engaging and client-friendly websites that are continually updated and improved, and those who are lacking in a number of key areas. The quality of the websites of the latter group is, at best, stagnating, and mobile websites in particular remain a weakness.These are the key findings of the new report “Websites for Wealth Management 2016 – The Digital Divide between Wealth Managers Deepens” for

|By Arabian Post Staff|Nearly half of the travellers believe losing money is one of the top-three threats they may face abroad, and credit card compromise is considered to be a top-three threat by 35% of users, according to research by Kaspersky Lab.The research also highlighted that there is a real danger when it comes to losing money when traveling: 22% of respondents have experienced such a loss, and 8% have had a card compromised whilst in a foreign country.In contrast,

|By Arabian Post Staff| Uzbekistan’s banking system recently received Moody’s endorsement when the agency acknowledged that the country’s banks continue to benefit from a growing economy with well-diversified export revenues.“As a result, banks in Uzbekistan are somewhat shielded from the volatility characteristic of some other countries in CIS,” Olga Ulyanova, a Vice President - Senior Analyst at Moody’s, said in a report.The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts real GDP growth of 5% for Uzbekistan in 2016, with growth supported by

|By Matein Khalid| In retrospect, 2016 will go down in German political and economic history as a significant game changer, on the scale of 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall), 1990 (reunification) and 1999 (the Euro), even 1945 (launch of Deutschemark), 1945 (Third Reich surrenders), 1943 (Stalingrad) and 1933 (Hitler elected). Chancellor Merkel, renamed Mutti Multi kulti, allowed a million migrants to settle in Germany. The far right AFD party’s support base has tripled in only one year from 5 to

|By Arabian Post Staff| Emirates Islamic and French financial institution Natixis announced the completion of a US$50 million Collateralised Murabaha deal on the Nasdaq Dubai Murabaha Platform.It is the largest collateralised Murabaha transaction closed by Emirates Islamic this year, and the first of its kind executed on the Nasdaq Dubai Murabaha Platform.A joint initiative between Nasdaq Dubai and Emirates Islamic, Nasdaq Dubai’s Murabaha platform provides a unique solution for banks and other financial institutions, and their corporate and individual customers,

|ARABIAN POST SPECIAL| The Ras Al Khaimah Offshore Centre was among the centres, along with London, Miami and Zurich, used by Mossack Fonseca, the little-known but powerful law firm based in Panama, that constitutes the core of the Panama Papers, which has rocked the world by revealing the offshore links some of the planet's most prominent people used to hide wealth.Mossack Fonseca has branches in London, Beijing, Miami, Zurich and more than 35 other places around the globe. The expose also brings

Barclays Plc still has “critical mass” to compete in the Middle East and will aim to help local companies raise capital even as it scales back lending, Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley said.The U.K. lender has more than 200 employees in the United Arab Emirates after job cuts in the country this year and will continue to operate its corporate, investment banking and wealth management businesses in the region, Staley, 59, said in an interview in Dubai on Thursday. Barclays’s

|By Arabian Post Staff| Hedge funds which bet on Saudi riyal’s dollar peg are reported to have lost heavily as the price rebound in the oil has apparently removed all immediate possibilities of Saudi Arabia abandoning the currency’s peg with the dollar. Several US hedge funds are understood to be among the losers.According to Bloomberg, contracts used to speculate on the kingdom’s exchange rate in the next 12 months have fallen to about the lowest since November. A $1 million