Spanish banks next for Greek-style ECB shakedown 20 Aug 2012 Spain’s lenders may already be using their central bank’s liquidity support. The ECB has submitted Greek banks to the same treatment. The longer Madrid has to wait for its bailout cash, the more use of so-called emergency liquidity assistance could spiral.
Pussy Riot jailing recalls Russia’s icy past 17 Aug 2012 A Russian court has found the punk band’s three members guilty of hooliganism after staging an impromptu anti-Kremlin concert in a church. It’s yet another sign of Vladimir Putin’s regime’s hardening to dissent and liberalisation. This should matter to investors.
Assange asylum is a political freebie for Ecuador 17 Aug 2012 The country’s leftist government has annoyed the U.S. by granting asylum to the WikiLeaks founder. Given that its oil exports, mineral exploration and loan funding are increasingly dominated by China, which suggested Assange for the 2010 Nobel, it’s also not totally surprising.
S.Africa mining bloodshed has global implications 17 Aug 2012 The deadly union turf war at a Lonmin platinum mine is a sovereign challenge and a global concern. South Africa has most of the world’s platinum, an essential industrial metal. It’s up to the government to restore order. The mining groups are stuck and have no easy options.
Euro prattle could give Draghi a hard time 17 Aug 2012 Finnish and Austrian ministers are talking of a euro split again. Talk is cheap, but such statements jar with Mario Draghi’s promise to fight convertibility risk. For the ECB’s bond-buying to get maximum impact, politicians must learn to shut up.
Review: How the West both lost and won Asian minds 17 Aug 2012 From Egypt to Japan, intellectuals have spent much of the last 150 years trying to respond to the temptations and horrors of European culture. Pankaj Mishra traces out the uneasy mix of emulation and rejection. Modernisation was hard then and isn’t much easier now.
ISS deal clears path towards fresh listing 16 Aug 2012 Previous attempts to sell or float the Danish cleaning giant flopped. Now two blue-chip investors are taking 500 mln euros of equity in a private deal. ISS will use the proceeds to get rid of costly junk bonds. That means any future listing becomes a smaller, simpler task.
Resolution shouldn’t give critics any more ammo 16 Aug 2012 Clive Cowdery’s insurance conglomerate is locked into paying fees to its M&A advisory arm despite ending its acquisition strategy. The fees are relatively small and cover expenses as well as salaries. But Resolution’s execs must be seen not to profit as the arrangement unwinds.
StanChart has some explaining to do on settlement 15 Aug 2012 Why did the bank pay a U.S. regulator $340 mln after loudly claiming it had made just $14 mln of suspect trades? Relieved shareholders can call it the cost of a quiet life, but that doesn’t justify paying up. For credibility’s sake, StanChart should show its working.
Markets too forgiving of French do-nothing summer 15 Aug 2012 France’s funding costs are at an all-time low as investors seek safety from the euro crisis. But markets seem blind to the country’s lack of competitiveness. Low bond yields should give Paris a golden opportunity to pursue reform. But it also lessens the pressure to do so.
Spain tries to spare its retail bank investors 15 Aug 2012 Preference shareholders in Spain’s bailed-out banks could get a haircut, but high coupons would later offset their loss. The government would be spared the political fallout of burning the cajas’ retail investors - but at the cost of weakening burden-sharing.
UBS’s tax bogeyman rears ugly head again 15 Aug 2012 A German regional leader says the bank is helping clients dodge an upcoming German/Swiss tax treaty, which UBS denies. The Swiss lender already had to fork out $780 mln in 2009 for breaking U.S. tax laws. A wider political struggle could be bad for the bank - and Swiss secrecy.
BBC’s Mark Thompson is odd choice as NY Times CEO 15 Aug 2012 The outgoing head of the UK’s largely state-funded broadcaster has run an outfit where revenue is mostly guaranteed - a far cry from the free-market challenges faced by the Times. But a taste for a fight with Rupert Murdoch may explain Thompson’s appeal to the Times’s owners.
StanChart $340 mln settlement puts NY on the spot 14 Aug 2012 It’s a costly, but manageable, way for the UK bank to move on. It feels like a climb-down for NY regulator Benjamin Lawsky, though, who claimed the bank was a $250 bln Iran-loving rogue. Fellow watchdogs will be off his back, but banking in NY may now carry more frictional costs.
Barclays’ new chair can afford to be bold on pay 14 Aug 2012 David Walker’s review of the troubled UK lender’s freewheeling bonus culture is well timed. Other investment banks are in no mood to go poaching, and face pressure from their own investors to curb pay. That gives Barclays’ new broom cover to make key changes to the status quo.
European Central Bank faces bond-buying Catch-22 14 Aug 2012 If the ECB wants its bond-buying programme to work, it must reassure investors that it wouldn’t rank above them in a restructuring. But solving that problem could raise another one - accumulated losses for the ECB would amount to massive transfers within the euro zone.
Latam’s bad oil policies laid bare across an ocean 13 Aug 2012 Despite some tough regimes and far smaller reserves, Africa is set to overtake Latin America’s crude output this year. The unlikely reversal reflects investor-friendly approaches in the likes of Angola. It’s also the clearest sign yet of how misguided the Latin region’s course is.
Julius Baer reinvention not as cheap as it looks 13 Aug 2012 The Swiss bank is paying a skinny 1.2 pct of assets for Bank of America’s non-U.S. private banking operations. Throw in restructuring costs and extra capital, though, and the $1.5 bln tag looks richer - especially for a business that’s unprofitable and hardly growing.
Besieged StanChart needs governance booster 13 Aug 2012 Chairman John Peace is spread too thinly. His peers on the bank’s board, some of whom have been around too long, lack financial oomph. A stronger board wouldn’t have prevented the attack by the New York regulator, but it might help the UK bank recover more quickly.
Spain’s bad bank valuation looks ripe for fiddling 13 Aug 2012 Madrid wants to fix its lenders by selling their assets to a bad bank. Ireland’s efforts in 2009 to price duff loans before offloading them to its version, NAMA, provide a handy valuation template. But they also suggest ways in which the process can be manipulated.