Ireland will transfer the first loans to the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) “bad bank” by the end of March, missing its latest deadline of late February, as it waits on European approval to begin the scheme. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has said work valuing the total loans initially worth 80 billion euros ($109bn) was…
US Federal Reserve officials moved to calm speculation that a surprise rise in its emergency lending rate could bring forward broader policy tightening, saying borrowing costs in the economy would stay low. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke flagged the move last week, saying the US central bank aimed to widen the spread between its main policy…
The corporate governance agenda has received great prominence during the past two decades. Many think of this as the next best thing after international accounting standards. But why is good governance so important? Share ownership structures and management structures have changed dramatically over time. Moving from family owned businesses to public companies, and the separation…
The majority of transactions have traditionally been made by phone, but the development of the internet and sophisticated trading software means that more and more people now have access to the world of forex trading from the comfort of their own homes. World Finance spoke to Nick Bang of ACM about the challenge of redefining…
While today, BOCI is truly a well positioned leading investment bank in the China and Hong Kong markets, Bank of China’s investment banking efforts have come a long way since being a small player just a couple of years ago. Marshall Nicholson, MD and Global Head of Equity Capital Markets at BOCI, says new leadership…
Time was when more than a few executives banked their salaries and lived off their corporate expenses. Not any more – such times are long gone. The recognition that travel and associated expenses represent most organisations’ second-largest controllable expense is driving the quest for the vast opportunities for savings that can be found through a…
As the dust settles over the economic turmoil of 2009, across the globe, many businesses are expecting – or at least hoping − that 2010 will prove to be a turning point in their fortunes. GDP in most major markets is expected to improve following a year of weak sales, corporate layoffs, idle plant and…
Democratic Republic of Congo’s inflation rate will fall to a target of 15 percent by the end of the year despite new figures that put it at more than twice that, its central bank has said. The bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) said annualised inflation was 38.7 percent in the second week of February, down…
It is Sunday evening in Warsaw. People are still enjoying their weekends in big malls and fancy restaurants across the city and commuters are crowded on the roads to the city. Most of the sky-scraper aspirants in the centre are still asleep but there are few lights already on at the Warsaw City Gate building….
The financial crisis has deeply affected the modus operandi of all the main players in the markets and raised new questions for policy makers and regulators. These questions regard, on the one hand, how to handle the crisis itself, and on the other hand, how to remove the structural imbalances, both at macro and micro…
