SRI LANKAN CRISIS
SRI LANKAN CRISIS
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AFGHANISTAN’S CONTROVERSIAL NEW FUND
AFGHANISTAN S NEW FUND
INTERVIEW WITH ANWAR IBRAHIM
INTERVIEW WITH ANWAR IBRAHIM Back To The Future For Malaysia
UKRAINE WAR PACKAGE-AUGUST/SEPT 2022
We Will Work Until Ukraine Has Victory, Ukraine Fighting On All Fronts, Looking Beyond The War In Lviv, Keeping The Lights On, Theory And Practice,
Spain banking: Unicaja swims against the stream
Spain banking: Unicaja swims against the stream By Eric Ellis October 05, 2020 As Spain prepares to digest the €17 billion merger of CaixaBank and Bankia, Andalucían lender Unicaja faces a threat to its regional dominance. While its community roots are an advantage, it also needs an answer to the … read more >>
Israel and Palestine – the practical partnership
The conference setting is stunning and fitting too; a sumptuous spa on Jordan’s Dead Sea shore, with magnificent views overlooking the West Bank. Corralled by the Union of Arab Banks, delegates come from across the Arab corporate mainstream; bankers (central and commercial), businessmen and officials, to talk banking in Palestine … read more >>
Cuba’s unlikely banking pioneer
Urbane and well-groomed, career banker Dave Seleski is an unlikely revolutionary. Tiny by US standards, with assets of around $3 billion, Seleski’s Stonegate Bank has found itself in the extraordinary position of being the only US bank to be authorized by both Washington and Havana to do business in Cuba. … read more >>
Mulyani rides to Indonesia’s rescue (again)
Indonesians well remember the moment when their popular finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati unexpectedly resigned her post in 2010, defeated by the country’s venal money politics, her reform work unfinished. It was a dark time, as Indonesians fretted that their most trusted public official had been crushed and, with her … read more >>
Shades of Kafka in Castro’s new Cuba
Franz Kafka, who wrote about European bureaucratic labyrinths, would have found much inspiration in Cuba officialdom’s Soviet-inspired maze. Euromoney had hoped to see some of the state-owned Cuban banks during our visit to Havana in August, but multiple requests failed to gain any response. The Banco Central de … read more >>
Banks at the heart of Cuba’s existential battle for reform
We don’t have banks in Cuba! The taxi driver helming a splendid 1957 Pontiac Pathfinder clasico off the taxi rank at Havana’s Hotel Nacional snorts with scorn. Euromoney has asked him to drive us to a rare meeting at the Banco Central de … read more >>
Ukraine: The perils of PrivatBank
Assailed by conflict and politics, Alexander Dubilet admits that the task of running Ukraine’s biggest bank is complicated. But he insists that PrivatBank can cope with the loss of large parts of its network and dismisses rumours about secret loans and the need for state support. How’s business? Euromoney asks … read more >>
Ukraine: Yulia’s tale: serving clients amid hostage-taking and betrayal
July 7, 2014 loomed as a normal business day for Yulia Vyalova, PrivatBank’s branch network boss in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region. Normal that is, inasmuch as circumstances allowed Vyalova and her charges to do their job, staffing the 155 PrivatBank branches around Luhansk after war had erupted three months earlier … read more >>
Njoroge stresses need for Kenya banks to innovate
Patrick Njoroge, governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, is reflecting on the topic of weight. But it is not the balancing of fiscal levers or the appropriate spreads for Kenya’s $7.2 billion in foreign reserves that is concerning him. No, for this recent arrival – he took over the … read more >>
Kenya: central bank governor Njoroge: Calling it as he sees it
Patrick Njoroge has spent much of his career outside Kenya, mostly in Washington at the IMF as a senior economist. Two decades in that role took him around the world, occasionally as its ambassador, more often in a team of firemen fixing damaged economies. As for central banks, he has … read more >>
Technology: Traditional banking is Finn-ished
A conversation with Dr Tom Dahlström of Finland’s OP Group, the ubiquitous financial services firm, is like having one’s own TED talk about banking. Firstly there’s his doctor’ thing. Not many banking executives can claim to be one – Dahlström’s doctorate is for economics, which he got in Helsinki after … read more >>
Kenya: Patrick Njoroge, corruption-fighter
Patrick Njoroge, governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, is reflecting on the topic of weight. But it is not the balancing of fiscal levers or the appropriate spreads for Kenya’s $7.2 billion in foreign reserves that is concerning him. No, for this recent arrival – he took over the … read more >>
Zeti ups the ante in fight with 1MDB
Malaysia’s formidable central bank governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz endured quite a month in October. It began with her contemplating the fresh lows that her beloved ringgit had plumbed on September 30, having lost 40% of its value in a year to become Asia’s worst-performing currency, and taking much of her … read more >>
Malaysia: Zeti’s last stand
Alas poor Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Malaysia’s embattled central bank governor. At 68, and after 15 years in the job, she is due to retire next April. But it is not certain whether she will make it that far. Her beloved ringgit has collapsed to its lowest level in 17 years, … read more >>
Zeti tries to rise above Malaysia’s creeping crisis
For Zeti Akhtar Aziz, the venerable governor of Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), the country’s central bank, these should be the best of times. Deep into her last year of what will be, by her retirement next April, 16 years at the helm of BNM, it should be a period of … read more >>
Spain: Sabadell tries out a new look
Since the financial crisis the bank has been transformed from a Catalan regional to the fifth largest bank in Spain. It now has ambitions in Europe and the Americas.
Byambasaikhan offers Mongolia a fresh exchange of ideas
In doing the rounds of Ulaanbaatar, it doesn’t take long to encounter someone who used to work at the Mongolian Stock Exchange. Former MSE staff seem to be deposited most everywhere across the narrow universe that is Corporate Mongolia; at its handful of banks, its few private equity firms, the … read more >>
Sri Lanka: Showdown at the central bank
Vendettas waged by government bureaucrats never look good but, in Sri Lanka, such higher-minded considerations seem to have evaded two powerful men who should know better. Arjuna Mahendran and Ajith Cabraal, the current and former governors of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, have been at each other’s throats over … read more >>
Bankia’s Alvarez: Saving the bank that didn’t exist
In early 2013, Jose Sevilla Alvarez, the then newly appointed chief executive of Spain’s Bankia, sat down with his chairman, the storied Spanish banker Jose Ignacio Goirigolzarri, to have a critical conversation about where Bankia was going. Outside, the atmosphere in Spain was as toxic as the rancid bank they … read more >>
Jho says it ain’t so: Malaysian tycoon denies role in 1MDB ‘heist of the century’
Low Taek Jho’s high-rise lair in Hong Kong is the stuff of thrillers, appropriately enough for a young Penang-born tycoon cast by his countrymen as a mysterious villain whose shadowy dealings have exposed the secrets of Malaysia Inc. The intrigues are felt the moment one steps inside the stylish foyer … read more >>
Mugur Isarescu: Romania’s central figure
THE soaring walls and revolving doors of Romania’s communist-era finance ministry on Bucharest’s Constitution Square expose a deeply rooted instability that hampers one of Europe’s more volatile economies. Portraits of former ministers are displayed around the walls of the ministry’s foyer, their faces looking beyond those doors to the pompous … read more >>
Artistic licence in Romania
When Euromoney visited the hulking headquarters of Romania’s finance ministry in Bucharest in December to interview Ioana Petrescu, the then occupant of that prestigious office, we were taken by the portraits in the entrance foyer that honoured those who had served before her. There were 20 portraits – and that … read more >>
Turkey: The Battle for Bank Asya
Turkey’s president has tried to kick of one of the country’s largest banks into touch, through public attacks and behind-the-scenes pressure. Despite becoming a political football, Bank Asya is still in the game. Can Turkey’s reputation in the west as a place to do business survive Erdogan’s continued, politically-motivated vendetta? … read more >>
Downfall of a dynasty: The last days of Ricardo Salgado and Banco Espírito Santo
Bankers in Lisbon say the demise of BES is a watershed moment for the country: the turning point when old Portugal became new Europe. Ricardo Salgado tried every trick he knew to save his empire, but found that the Portuguese establishment could not – or would not – save him. … read more >>
Espírito Santos and Queiroz Pereiras: Duel of two dynasties
Ricardo Salgado went to war with a rival pillar of the Portuguese business establishment in his frantic efforts to shore up Espírito Santo group. But Pedro Queiroz Pereira had the last laugh . For a man steeped in family honour, there is a rueful irony in the fact that it was … read more >>
Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s new president: Death and Taxes (from 2004)
Shortlisted for the 2005 British Business Journalist of the Year Award (Economics) Death and Taxes in Kabul Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani is battling warlords, cabinet colleagues, indifferent global donors and stomach cancer as he struggles to salvage Afghanistan’s ravaged economy. If he fails, the world could pay an enormous price. … read more >>
Inside Ukraine’s Economic Crisis
When Euromoney penetrated the economy and finance ministries in Kiev in late May, as well as the central bank, it found an atmosphere of unease and uncertainty. A supposed dream-team, which in reality is a collection of talented and driven novices, has a battle on its hands to keep Ukraine’s … read more >>
Spain: Laboral flies the co-op flag
Jon Emaldi Abasolo surveys the remains of Spain’s devastated banking landscape and scratches his head. He’s genuinely confused. “We know how we manage our bank,” says Abasolo, a director of the Basque savings bank Caja Laboral Kutxa, part of the Mondragon group of co-operative businesses (MCC), “and we know that … read more >>
Indonesia: Flight of the Navigator
Muhammad Chatib Basri is not a big fan of bureaucracies. One of the reasons so many Indonesians have become religious, jokes Indonesia’s 48-year-old finance minister, Jakarta’s ninth in 16 years, is because they have to deal with the government. Citing a common gripe of his 250 million compatriots – and … read more >>
Emerging Europe: A free market for Georgia?
By the seasoned standards of the world’s finance ministers, Georgia’s Nodar Khaduri, aged 43 and just over a year in the slot, is a relative babe in arms. Take Euromoney’s last five finance ministers of the year. Our 2008 winner, China’s Xi Xuren, was the oldest, at 61, while, at … read more >>
Schapelle Revisited..
The trials of Schapelle There are braying reporters, dozing judiciary members, colourful lawyers and assorted hangers-on basking in the limelight and baking in the Indonesian heat. Centre stage, an Australian woman s life is at stake.. Judgement in Denpasar The Bali expats and intelligentsia are disgusted by Australia’s racist reaction. The … read more >>
Protected: Sandra
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
What China’s Off-the-Books Figures Mean for Australia
Last September, a small news item in China’s official media, that in less skittish economic times might have sailed through unremarked, revealed a disturbing truth about this suddenly most essential of nations – that too often its official statistics are bogus. Portents and truths sprung from China in recent times … read more >>
ASIO Took It – But Was It Timor’s or Australia’s?
Apparently in international law as in life, the most important things get hidden in plain view. And so it was that on Tuesday in The Hague, an International Court of Justice judge from Somalia – a tiny impoverished land that in recent times has come to know a thing or … read more >>
Ghosts and Memory Sticks: Court Hears East Timor Case Against ASIO Swoop
PERHAPS it was a glow emanating from the Mandela bust outside the court, or from the bronzed Gandhi next to it, but an unexpectedly gentile civility pervaded The Hague’s baronial Peace Palace on Monday, as the United Nations’ International Court of Justice (ICJ) began hearing a case that outwardly seems … read more >>
Morocco: Attijariwafa stakes claims south of the Sahara
It’s a steamy mid-September and l’atmosphere in downtown Casablanca could well be mistaken for a languid late summer in Marseilles. In myriad chic eateries, Fashionable Young Things in oversized Jackie O sunglasses tap instant messages to each other into new iPhones over café au lait, while their male equivalents motor … read more >>
In Singapore’s Shadows
From the late 1960s until last Sunday night, the closest Singapore has ever come to a race riot was in June this year when McDonald’s offered locals a Hello Kitty soft toy in blackface, with an order of burger and fries. Bad idea. The inner Singaporean was uncorked. Chaos reigned … read more >>
The Brothers’ Grip
Meet Sumanadasa Abeygunawardena. He’s every saver’s dream come true – a bank director who can predict the future. Abeygunawardena is the ‘working director’ of one of Sri Lanka’s biggest banks, the state-owned National Savings Bank (NSB) – that is, when he’s not being a celebrity soothsayer. Abeygunawardena’s main claim to … read more >>
Myanmar’s Little Helper
Revolutions have a way of revealing inconvenient truths; the dictator is toppled, his cronies flee in haste while they can, and in the ransacked files of the regime’s abandoned palaces, the dark secrets of tyrants – and the hypocrisy of their embarrassed enablers, too – are revealed. But sometimes revolutions … read more >>
Sri Lanka – Rajapaksa Calls “Bull Shit” On Global Mail Coverage
Last weekend, as a courtesy, The Global Mail emailed Sri Lanka’s unelected Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa a link to our story on the nepotism among Sri Lanka’s powerful elite. Gota, as Sri Lankans know him, is the country’s enforcer-in-chief. The former soldier is credited with having masterminded his presidential brother … read more >>
Sri Lanka Part Three – The Smugglers’ Prey
WHAT does a Sri Lankan would-be asylum seeker look like? Many look like this man. His name is Gnanaseelan. He’s 32. He’s a Tamil, though never a Tiger. A father. A widower.He lives in this desperate shanty outside the seaside hamlet of Mullaitivu, on Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged north-east coast, with … read more >>
Sri Lanka Part Two – The Monks’ Army
Sri Lanka’s raffish capital, where we begin our series, is in economic catch-up mode. Colombo is replacing the colonial-era roads and railways built when Churchill was a boy and ‘Ceylon’ was a languid tropical afterthought for the British who ruled the plantation island.Though it took its time – 10 years … read more >>
Sri Lanka Part One – How Not To Win A War
FOUR years after its brutal victory over Tamil Tiger rebels that ended a 26-year-long civil war, Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-led government is at pains to persuade the world that it has at last brought peace and unity to this troubled island. And the captain of the flag-carrying SriLankan Airlines flight 423 … read more >>
Singapore
Greetings Singaporeans You ve likely arrived here because of the recent fuss after the airing of some inconvenient facts about the corporate history and possible conflicts of Foreign/Law Minister Shanmugam, that seemed to have stirred him (and his followers) http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/out-of-the-haze-a-singapore-spring/646/ Whenever one writes about Singapore, I get many emails from…
Out Of The Haze, A Singapore Spring?
When you are Singapore’s Lee family, and your clan has exercised absolute and uninterrupted control over its swanky specklet of Asia for 54 years, fellows like Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam are handy to have within your power court. K. Shanmugam, as he’s less tongue-twistingly known, may have escaped the attention of those … read more >>
Wendi…back by popular demand…
Cheers to Wendi! Gan bei! Drink the cup dry! It s 8 pm on a freezing night in Xuzhou, and we re having a jolly time in the Overflowing Fragrance dining room of the Sea Sky Holiday Hotel, an oddly named establishment given that this grim industrial city of 10 million people … read more >>