Global news and insight for corporate financial professionals
In its attempts to bring investment to India, the country’s new government is facing a host of challenges. If it stays the course, its efforts should pay off. or years, the phenomenon that domestic and global corporations and fund managers ...
As talks between Argentina’s government and its creditors have turned more contentious, corporations have found better ways to overcome their debt woes. For Argentina’s corporations these are frustrating times. Following the December 2001 Argentine peso devaluation and sovereign default, many ...
With their educated workforce and low costs, the Baltic states present some of the most interesting FDI opportunities in Europe. So why are they still struggling to attract investment? Two years ago, a British laboratory equipment manufacturer, Grant Instruments, stumbled ...
More and more companies are appointing chief risk officers to manage risks throughout the organization. A few are embracing risk-management techniques to gain a competitive edge. Prakash Shimpi: “Every company needs a chief risk officer” What started as a trickle ...
Botswana is betting on its financial sector to diversify the economy. Festus Mogae: The IFSC initiative is about creating jobs Since gaining independence from Britain in 1966, Botswana transformed itself from one of the world’s poorest countries into a middle-income ...
In April the darling of the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, announced its intention to pack its bags and move to the United States, where it would reincorporate in Delaware. For markets and investors in Australia and ...
In the first of a two-part series, Global Finance identifies the best online corporate and consumer banks by country and product or service category. I t’s hard to believe that it has been 10 years since Web banking kicked off. ...
Russia Frozen assets: Yukos continues to flirt with bankruptcy The Yukos affair continued to dominate headlines in Russia. After warning that Yukos would go bankrupt within a matter of weeks due to the Russian government’s freeze on its assets, imprisoned ...
Brazil Brazil is doing battle with neighboring Argentina over what Brasilia feels are its Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur) partner’s unfair trade barriers. The most recent row involves home appliances, the import of which Argentine authorities sought to restrict in ...
China Recent data suggest China’s efforts to slow down its torrid economy have paid off. A cooling trend has become evident, particularly in fixed-asset investments and money supply. It is still unclear whether the broader economy will follow suit, as ...
India The Indian banking sector saw the first collapse of a new-generation bank in July. The Global Trust Bank was one of the new private banks set up 10 years ago when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued licenses ...
In the first of a two-part series, Global Finance identifies the best online corporate and consumer banks by country and product or service category. I t’s hard to believe that it has been 10 years since Web banking kicked off. ...
United States Bryant Park’s new crystal palace Displaying New York bravura, Bank of America broke ground on a $1 billion crystalline skyscraper in midtown Manhattan on August 2. It was the day after the federal government raised the terror alert ...
UNITED KINGDOM Down the tubes: Banks find principles are tough to apply Just one year after signing on to the Equator Principles, the UK’s Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has found itself at the center of a storm over the ...
LATIN AMERICA/CHINA Amorim: “Opportunity will prevail” Latin American governments used to turn to the United States, their traditional trade and investment partner, for help in kick-starting their economies. However, the region has now set its sights on Beijing to seek ...
Shakedown: Santander’s Botín seals the deal with Abbey’s CEO Luqman Arnold (right) Twenty years ago Banco Santander was the smallest of Spain’s top seven banks. Today its near €40 billion market capitalization ranks Santander second among eurozone banks, just behind ...
The Americas Proposed new accounting rules have put the damper on the issuance of a popular type of convertible corporate bond in the US market. The Financial Accounting Standards Board wants companies to treat so-called contingent convertible bonds, known as ...
Europe/US Major acquisitions in the banking industry are continuing to keep investment bankers busy, with sizable transactions announced in Europe as well as the US. Santander Central Hispano, Spain’s biggest bank, agreed on July 26 to buy UK-based Abbey for ...
The Americas Citigroup introduced four regional indexes that track the world’s most-liquid depositary receipts. Known as the Citigroup Liquid DR Indices, they include only those companies that have US exchange-listed American depositary receipts or London-traded global depositary receipts that are ...
The Americas While the US economy continues to chug along at a respectable pace, the outlook for the dollar remains worrisome in light of the burden of financing the current-account deficit, analysts say. The deficit is at an unprecedented level, ...
Europe A horse race could be emerging between the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank on the interest-rate front, says John Normand, global fixedincome and foreign exchange strategist at JPMorgan Chase in London. The dollar’s rate disadvantage versus the ...
Asia If weakness in the Japanese stock market continues, this could be troublesome for the yen’s prospects, says Bilal Hafeez, head of foreign exchange strategy at Deutsche Bank in London. The yen’s moves against the dollar have been highly correlated ...
EUROPE Lewis:“Producing correct numbers may be impossible” with the first Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) deadline imminent, analysts and systems vendors paint a picture of companies struggling to comply with regulators’ requirements for higher levels of visibility and transparency into company financials. SOX, ...
UNITED STATES Miillllerr:Diidn’’tt miissss aa ssttep Heidi Miller, the new CEO of JPMorgan Chase Treasury & Security Services, says her area of responsibility will be the nerve center of the number-two US bank following its merger with Chicagobased Bank One. ...
UNITED STATES Puccia: “We don’t want to get ahead of the industry” When analysts at New York-based ratings agency Standard & Poor’s sit down with a company’s management team, they want to know how well the executives understand and manage ...
NIGERIA Omiyi: Hopes to heal rifts It remains to be seen whether Royal Dutch/Shell’s move to appoint a Nigerian as head of its largest African subsidiary will soothe the labor and ethnic groups who regularly threaten oil production in the ...
