By Keith Wallis and Osamu Tsukimori | SINGAPORE/TOKYO SINGAPORE/TOKYO Oil prices edged up on Friday on news that U.S. President Donald Trump could be set to impose new sanctions on multiple Iranian entities, firing geopolitical tensions between the two nations. Comments by Russian energy minister Alexander Novak that oil producers had cut their output in accordance with a pact agreed in December also helped support prices, analysts […]
Passive investors could control over half of US stock and bond markets by 2021, according to Moody’s research — a trend that is illustrated by the strong start to this year for exchange traded funds. US actively-managed funds faced net outflows last year of $340bn as investors poured $505bn into passive products such as ETFs that track indices, according to data from Morningstar, a research service. The momentum […]
By Leika Kihara and Tetsushi Kajimoto | TOKYO TOKYO Japan will push back firmly on any attempts by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to meddle with its independence on setting currency and monetary policies, say sources familiar with the deliberations in Tokyo. It was the first clear sign from Japan that Tokyo won’t allow Trump to dictate domestic economic policy, leaving room for potential tensions between the […]
Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com, As I outlined in my article ‘The False Economic Narrative Will Die In 2017’, the mainstream media has been carefully crafting the propaganda meme that the Trump administration is inheriting a global economy in “ascension,” when in fact, the opposite is true. Trump enters office at a time of longstanding decline and will likely witness severe and accelerated decline over the […]
Friday 02.15 GMT Overview Asian markets retreated following another cautious session on Wall Street overnight. Investors have headed to the sidelines as they digest the Federal Reserve’s most recent policy meeting and await the closely watched US jobs report due later on Friday. Hot topic Central banks have been in focus this week. The Bank of Japan, Federal Reserve and Bank of England have all kept monetary […]
WASHINGTON The Trump administration said on Thursday Israel’s building of new settlements or expansion of existing ones in occupied territories may not be helpful in achieving peace with Palestinians, adopting a more measured tone than its previous pro-Israel announcements. In a statement issued two weeks before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit U.S. President Donald Trump, the White House said the administration “has not […]
The rouble turned volatile as investors made sense of a tweak by the Trump administration to part of the US sanctions on Russia. The currency moved 1.7 per cent higher, trading at an 18-month high of RUB58.547, before quickly giving up most of that rise and falling back below the RUB59 level as investors parsed the decision. The changes in the sanctions appeared to re-authorised certain technology […]
02 February 2017 For years, mid-tier banks have been told they’re potentially heading for extinction The barbell effect dictates that the middle will be significantly challenged by an increasingly tough business environment, with only the very large and the very niche institutions being able to succeed. And indeed the outlook does look challenging, if one adds up the increased cost of regulatory compliance, the pressure on fees […]
The Bank of England upgraded UK growth forecasts significantly for the second time in six months on Thursday in the latest indication the central bank’s once-dire outlook for the economy after June’s Brexit vote has been proven overly pessimistic. The bank said it now predicts gross domestic product will grow 2 per cent this year, the same as last year and up from 1.4 per cent forecast […]
By Isabel Coles | RASHIDIYA, Iraq RASHIDIYA, Iraq His name was Ayman, but the couple who brought the boy home to their Iraqi village after buying him for $500 called him Ahmed. Islamic State militants had killed or enslaved Ayman’s parents in their purge of the Yazidi religious minority to which he belongs, then sold the four-year-old to Umm and Abu Ahmed, who are Muslims. For the […]
If you’re looking for a quick, easy, and affordable way to protect your Google account, Facebook, GitHub, Dropbox, Salesforce admin account (and much more), or looking for a way to harden your Mac or Windows login credentials, then you need to take a look at YubiKey. Must read: Best Raspberry Pi alternatives, starting at only $5 OK, first off, what is YubiKey? YubiKey is a small authentication […]
By Yashaswini Swamynathan U.S. stocks slipped on Thursday, as bank stocks fell after the Federal Reserve provided little clarity into whether it would raise interest rates at its next meeting, even as the central bank painted an upbeat picture of the economy. The Fed, which left interest rates unchanged on Wednesday, gave no firm signal of a hike in March as it closely watches the impact of […]
Days after Gmail users all over the world fell victim to a phishing scam, it seems that PayPal users are vulnerable as well as they are being targeted by hackers to give up login credentials. According to this phishing scam, fake PayPal pages have been prepared to trap unsuspecting users into giving up their personal data. The pages are highly convincing as baits because they look very real […]
Why Frankfurt? The Frankfurt of common conception and the Frankfurt of reality are very different things. Before arrival it tends to be a hazy cross between a giant conference centre churning through huge trade shows and bank HQs in modern glass towers. There is something to this – there’s surely nowhere else in the world that comes down as far on the business side of the business […]
La Villette, a corrugated iron convention hall on the northern rim of Paris, was meant to be François Fillon’s launch pad towards the French presidency after winning the centre-right nomination in a landslide. But on Sunday he stood in the packed venue, days after claims emerged that the Republican candidate had allegedly employed his wife in a fake parliamentary job for years and, suddenly, victory seemed to […]
Currency traders are in a bind. Has the dollar rally run out of steam and is it ripe for a big sell-off, or has bullish momentum paused ahead of another leg higher? Here are the pros and cons for the currency as we approach several key events in February. What’s bugging the dollar? Investors’ second thoughts. Dollar trading in recent months can be split into three phases. […]
02 February 2017 MARC has removed the ratings on WCT Holdings Berhad’s (WCT Holdings) RM1.0 billion MTN Programme and RM1.5 billion Sukuk Murabahah Programme from MARCWatch Developing. The ratings were placed on MARCWatch Developing on November 4, 2016 to enable the rating agency to reassess WCT Holdings’ business plan and the impact on its credit metrics following a major change in shareholders after the group’s founding members […]
The Bank of England kept its key interest rate at 0.25%, gilt purchase program at GBP435BN, and corporate-bond plan at GBP10b, voting 9-0 on all 3 decisions. The BOE also raises growth forecasts, while keeping its inflation forecasts broadly unchanged, and said the current policy stance “depended on the trade-off between above-target inflation and slack in the economy.” The central banks also reiterated that “monetary policy could […]
ULAANBAATAR/HONG KONG Private citizens in Mongolia are donating cash, jewelry, gold and even horses to help the government make a near $600 million payment to bondholders next month. The cash-strapped nation has been embroiled in an economic crisis brought about by a collapse in foreign investment, slowing growth in China and weak commodity prices. Its currency, the tugrik, lost nearly a quarter of its value last year. […]
The number of high earners across the EU’s financial institutions leapt in 2015 compared with a year earlier, increasing by 33 per cent. The European Banking Authority, which collated the data, attributed the rise to the weak euro against the pound at the time. Since the UK’s vote to leave the EU last June sterling’s strength against the euro has been battered. The vast majority of those […]
Chocolate industry executives breathed a collective sigh of relief earlier this year after the impact of the bankruptcy of a key cocoa industry player at the end of 2016 remained muted as a result of a weak cocoa market. Expectations of bumper supplies from west Africa, the leading regional producer of cocoa beans, have been weighing on bean prices of the key chocolate ingredient. This has helped […]
Grab has announced plans to invest US$700 million in Indonesia over the next four years, as part of efforts to increase its footprint in a market where it has seen growth. The Southeast Asian ride-sharing operator said Thursday the new investment would support the Indonesian government’s ambition of becoming the region’s largest digital economy by 2020. It would include plans to set up a research and development […]
Deutsche Bank posted a €1.9bn net loss for the fourth quarter, as its performance was weighed down by the cost of its $7.2bn mortgage mis-selling settlement with the US Department of Justice. Germany’s biggest bank took €1.6bn of litigation charges in the final three months of the year, the bulk of which related to the DoJ settlement, which chief executive John Cryan had made one of his […]
Almost a decade on from the financial crisis, a global deadline for reform of the $544tn derivatives market has triggered a last-minute scramble by hundreds of small banks, insurers and pension funds. Many of these institutions use bespoke derivatives such as swaps to protect their operations from sudden changes in asset prices. In a month’s time they face higher costs and regulatory burdens. Plenty are not ready. […]
