China’s vast foreign exchange reserves showed on Friday their first quarterly drop since 1998. The decline was partly attributed to a slowing Chinese economy and capital outflows amid worldwide economic ambiguity. Reserves fell by $20.5bn to $3.18trn in the final quarter of 2011, said the People’s Bank of China.Net quarterly decreases are rare for China,…
Argentina will enforce new restrictions on consumer goods’ imports by February in an effort to remedy its retreating trade surplus, according to a resolution published by the Revenue Office. The new regime will require importers to file a sworn statement of planned imports to the tax agency “prior to the issuing of the request, purchase…
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is scheduled to start a six day visit to the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to discuss the country’s energy policy, China’s foreign ministry said late on Tuesday. During the trip he will meet leaders of the three nations to “promote the development of China-Arab dealings and relations with the Islamic…
Japan’s central bank has announced that it has already done enough to combat deflation, brushing off yet another call for more action from the ranks of the ruling party. Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Hirohide Yamaguchi dismissed a suggestion from a Democratic Party lawmaker that the central bank should consider scrapping a self-imposed cap on…
Swiss National Bank chair Philipp Hildebrand resigned late on Monday over a controversial personal foreign currency trade undertaken by his wife. Hildrebrand’s wife Kashya had switched SFr400,000 into dollars in mid August, just days before a Swiss National Bank intervention in the FX market. Hildebrand said at a press conference after his resignation: “I came…
India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Sing, on Sunday slashed a previously set forecast for the country’s economic growth rate to seven percent, down from 8.5 percent a year ago. The country was initially estimated to grow around nine percent for the current fiscal year but was scaled down by both the Finance Ministry and the Reserve…
China’s banking regulator has told commercial lenders to restrict new credit they provide to local governments’ financing vehicles, to ward off potential risks of default, state media reports. The move is part of broader efforts to check explosive lending growth that has set off concerns about asset price bubbles and the potential creation of a…
Samsung Electronics, the world’s biggest consumer electronics group by sales, on Friday reported all-time-high quarterly profits for the October to December period despite the slowing global economy. The South Korean group assessed its operating profit at approximately Won5.2trn or $4.5bn, the company said in a statement. Up 73 percent, profits were mainly boosted…
US prosecutors late on Tuesday charged three Swiss bankers with conspiring to help US citizens evade over $1.2bn in assets from the IRS. The filed indictment, which refers to ‘Swiss Bank A’ only, shows that Roger Keller, Urs Frei and Michael Berlika plotted to open and service several secret accounts for US clients as they…
Land sale revenue across 130 Chinese cities has dropped 13 percent year-on-year in 2011 to ¥1.86trn, said property research group China Index Academy late on Wednesday. In contrast, countrywide land sales revenue in 2010 amounted to ¥2.9trn, said the Ministry of Finance. China’s government had hoped that curbing soaring real estate prices would create more…
