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 world,” its foreign minister Liu Weimin said. Saudi Arabia is currently China’s largest supplier of crude while Qatar has emerged as its biggest supplier of liquefied natural gas. Beijing is likely to soon overtake Washington as the biggest buyer of Saudi Arabian oil. Weimin’s announcement comes at a time when...
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 its government bond purchases to be able to buy more debt and reflate the economy. Yamaguchi told a parliamentary committee there could be turmoil in financial markets if they got the impression that the central bank was directly financing government debt. “We are aware that if the BOJ’s lo...
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 to the conclusion that it is not possible for me to deliver a definite proof that my wife requested the currency transaction without my knowledge. Unfortunately, mistakes were made around this transaction.” Meanwhile, the bank has begun its search for a replacement. Vice Chairman ...
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 Bank at the weekend. “India is going through difficult times. We are up to the task of meeting the challenges we face as a nation,” Singh said. The prime minister told a congregation that he was confident that the economy will return to a growth rate of between nine and 10 percent in the medium term....
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 fresh crop of bad loans. The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) ordered banks to inspect their existing loans to commercial units used by local governments to raise funds, and to stop lending to those projects that are backed only by expected fiscal revenues, the state-run Shanghai Securiti...
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 by the company’s record smartphone sales and the once-off gains from the sale of its hard disk drive business to Seagate Technology. The group said operating profit may be Won200bn higher or lower than Friday’s preliminary estimate when audited results are announced l...
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 tried to escape from banks including UBS after the lenders began to be investigated by the IRS in 2008 and 2009. The Department of Justice said fake accounts were set up in jurisdictions including Hong Kong, Panama and Liechtenstein. The indictment comes in the midst of Swiss -US talks that attempt to resolve a US probe...
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 house sales but uncertain house prices have scared away new home buyers. In December year-on-year sales dropped by 30 percent, China Vanke, the nation’s biggest developer by revenue said. Over 2011 three times as many land auctions, 900 in total, failed last year, according to the lat...
Miners led Britain’s FTSE 100 higher early on Tuesday, boosted by stronger-than-expected manufacturing data from China, and as the index caught up with sharp gains posted in Europe in the previous session. London’s blue chip index was up 67.67 points or 1.2 percent at 5,639.95 by 0903 GMT on the first trading day since the new year holiday break. “Following on from a solid performance across Europe yesterday, investors piled in and trading screens quickly turned blue,” Manoj Ladwa, senior trader at ETX Capital, said. “Traders will be looking for the positive momentum to continue as January usually serves as a barometer for the rest ...
Energy exploration firm Afren said production at its Ebok field, offshore Nigeria, had reached around 40,000 barrels per day (bpd), taking its end-2011 net output to some 55,400 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), ahead of target. An output rate above the year-end goal of 50,000 boepd has been sustained since December 19, it said, as a result of operations in Ivory Coast as well as Ebok and Okoro in Nigeria. “The group is in a strong position with aggregate net working interest production of 55,400 boepd going into 2012,” Osman Shahenshah, chief executive of Afren, said in a statement on Monday. He added the company’s forthcoming...