Author Archives: Darren Marchal

GM repays US, Canada $5.8bn

General Motors Co has completed repayments totaling $5.8bn to the US and Canadian governments for loans that helped fund the US automaker’s bailout last year, the company has announced. GM, which emerged from bankruptcy in July 2009, had pledged to repay the balance of loans from the US Treasury and Export Development Canada “in full…

Ukraine seeks $12bn in new IMF programme

“We will present a Ukrainian draft programme for cooperation with the IMF over the next two an a half years. It’s a new programme aimed at supporting economic growth”, Tigipko told reporters. “I think such a programme might hover around $12bn,” he said. The ex-Soviet republic of 46 million people, which needs fresh IMF credit…

Ghosts of past shackle Bosnia’s economic future

The conflict between Serbs, Muslims and Croats may no longer be waged with heavy artillery and ethnic cleansing, but a toxic combination of de facto partition, obstruction and graft by politicians in each group keeps a stranglehold on the economy. “What sort of investment can we expect when our political leaders are sending such very…

KKR flotation takes it back to the future

An analysis of the firm’s listing documents underlines the way the industry has changed in the years since it was forced to withdraw its 2007 listing as the financial crisis set in. A comparison of the two documents also shows the changes to the firm’s ambitions and the way it does its business as it…

Merger stimulates growth

ICBC Macau was established by integrating the Macau Branch of ICBC (Macau Branch) with Seng Heng Bank (Seng Heng) in July 2009. Holding a full banking licence issued by the Monetary Authority of Macau (AMCM), ICBC Macau has 14 branches, three subsidiaries and 500 staff members in Macau. It is the biggest local bank in…

Merger stimulates growth

ICBC Macau was established by integrating the Macau Branch of ICBC (Macau Branch) with Seng Heng Bank (Seng Heng) in July 2009. Holding a full banking licence issued by the Monetary Authority of Macau (AMCM), ICBC Macau has 14 branches, three subsidiaries and 500 staff members in Macau. It is the biggest local bank in…

Banco Popolare CEO sees 2010 results in line

Italy’s Banco Popolare expects 2010 results to be in line with forecasts while possible sales of non-strategic assets could boost its capital ratios, its chief executive said recently. In La Stampa daily, Pier Francesco Saviotti also ruled out any merger with Italian cooperative bank peer Ubi Banca, speculation which regularly surfaces, and said there had…

The new broker generation

At present, without giving unnecessary specifics the whole foreign exchange market can be described in a few words: expanding, progressive, capacious, a kind of melting pot (as applied to the group and level of its participants). The last characteristics will be considered in details. Stability to different financial disasters (due to the principal of functioning),…

Star in the ascent

“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”.  A quote that has been variously attributed to individuals as diverse as physicist Niel Bohr and baseball player Yogi Berra.   Whoever said it first, it most definitely has a ring of truth, and to prove it, here’s a prediction taken from the IMF World Economic Outlook…