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ATHENS: Greece's small troubled lender FBBank has been split into "good" and "bad" parts, with the healthy business absorbed by Greece's largest lender National Bank (NBG), the central bank said on Saturday.Hit by rising bad debts and losses from government bond write-downs, Greek banks have been consolidating to cope with a deep recession, now in its sixth year, and lack of access to wholesale funding markets.Banking sources told Reuters on Friday that FBBank would be wound down as part of a wider restructuring of the banking sector stemming from the country's debt crisis.FBBank, majority owned by the family of Greek shipowner Victor Restis, operates 19 branches in the country that will be taken over by National Bank as of May 13. It reported total assets of 1.6 billion euros ($2.1 billion) in 2011.The bank, with a market share of less than 0.5 percent in terms of assets, had informed the ...
ZURICH: Switzerland's finance minister supports exchanging bank client data with foreign tax authorities under certain conditions, which the Swiss government will begin debating in June, according to a newspaper interview.Swiss bank secrecy has come under fire, particularly from the United States, France and Germany, since the financial crisis. Switzerland agreed in 2009 to share more information with foreign authorities hunting tax cheats on request, but until now has rejected an automatic exchange of data."If you ...
SHANGHAI: Alibaba Group, China's largest e-commerce firm, will take a 28 percent stake in digital mapping company AutoNavi Holdings Ltd, part of Alibaba's move to boost its competitveness by beefing up its product lineup.Unlisted Alibaba will invest $294 million to become the largest shareholder in the Chinese-based firm, according to a statement from AutoNavi on Friday which confirmed an earlier report from news portal Sina.The move comes after Alibaba, which competes with Tencent Holidings, acquired ...
MUMBAI: Indian bonds rose for a fourth straight session on Friday, with yields posting their biggest weekly fall since early January, on hopes upcoming inflation data would support the case for more rate cuts and that the central bank would buy more debt.The rise this week came amidst heavy volumes, with foreign investors continuing to snap up Indian debt as part of a rally in riskier assets globally, as easier monetary policies worldwide increase liquidity.Hopes ...
NEW YORK: A market has yet to materialize for credit default swaps offering protection on Apple Inc's record USD17bn bond issue, despite the enormous size of the deal.While quotes are available and prices have been published by data vendors since May 1, activity has been negligible, with only a handful of investors attempting to make a market in the five-year maturity."I would think CDS will start trading at some point, but this is one of ...
WASHINGTON: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday said the central bank is stepping up its monitoring of "too big too fail" companies and other risks to financial stability.Bernanke said the Fed was moving into a more systemic mode of financial monitoring after failing to spot the seeds of the 2008 Wall Street meltdown more than four years ago."The step-up in our monitoring is motivated importantly by a shift in financial regulation and supervision toward ...
NEW YORK: A battle over US computer giant Dell heated up Friday as corporate raider Carl Icahn and other investors made a new offer and called a planned buyout led by company founder Michael Dell a "giveaway."The investor group, which holds around 13 percent of Dell shares, said in a regulatory filing it would urge shareholders to reject the private equity buyout and opt instead for its "superior" recapitalization plan, keeping the company public.Icahn has ...More Articles...
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