Monday Business Edition

The bank had to be taken over by Afghanistan’s central bank after claims that former executives granted themselves off-the-book loans worth a reported 900 million dollars which were partly used to buy luxury properties in Dubai.

The crisis has highlighted chaos and corruption in Afghanistan’s financial system, more than nine years after Karzai’s Western-supported government replaced the Taliban regime following a US-led invasion in 2001.

The ICB, launched last year in the wake of the global financial crisis, also proposed raising capital requirements and recommended that state-rescued Lloyds Banking Group should sell off more assets to boost competition.

“The Commission is … considering forms of retail ring-fencing under which retail banking operations would be carried out by a separate subsidiary within a wider group,” the ICB said in a provisional report.

Iceland’s government insisted it could pay back more than 90 percent of the money lost, despite most voters having rejected a deal to refund 3.9 billion euros ($5.6 billion) to the two countries, according to partial results.

“The Icelandic state has absolutely no problem in repaying its debts” resulting from the collapse of the Icesave bank, Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson told reporters.

“The Icelandic state has absolutely no problem in repaying its debts,” Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson told a news conference the day after voters gave a resounding “no” to a proposed deal for repaying 3.9 billion euros ($5.6 billion) to the two countries.

“Iceland’s reserves are more than enough to cover all the payments in the coming years,” he added.

The 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami knocked out a sizable portion of the nation’s electricity supply, creating a ripple effect that has spread throughout the economy and leaving Japan with a new kind of problem.

“Over the past twenty years, the primary cause of economic downturns has been deficient aggregate demand,” BNP Paribas chief economist Ryutaro Kono said in a research note.

So much so that US Internet giant Google is preparing to open a research centre in the German capital.

Based in the top floors of an anonymous building in former communist East Berlin, for example, SoundCloud, launched in 2008, is one of the fastest growing companies in the music world.

Anibal Cavaco Silva said that with new elections due on June 5 “what we need now is an interim programme so that the next government can take part in the final negotiations, because it is the next government that will implement” the deal that emerges.

“It’s understandable (and) we need, let’s say, a little imagination on the part of European institutions to come up with a suitable interim programme,” he added.

“We want jobs, growth, our welfare state intact, and we are not going to pay for bankers’ mistakes,” European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) leader John Monks said in front of a crowd organisers estimated at 45,000.

The tens of thousands of marchers swarmed from everywhere from Spain to Romania into Budapest, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.

In countries affected by repeated cycles of political and criminal violence, poverty rates are 20 percentage points higher than in other countries, the World Bank said in a new report.

“If we are to break the cycles of violence and lessen the stresses that drive them, countries must develop more legitimate, accountable and capable national institutions that provide for citizen security, justice and jobs,” said World Bank president Robert Zoellick.

Retail analysts estimate up to £620 million (707 million euros, $1.0 billion) may be spent in Britain as a direct result of Prince William’s marriage to girlfriend Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey on April 29.

Britons are snapping up wedding memorabilia ahead of Britain’s biggest royal wedding since 1981, when William’s mother Diana married heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles.

The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and Singapore Exchange (SGX) announced plans in October to merge, hoping to create one of the world’s largest financial trading hubs and a rival to Hong Kong.

But the Aus$8.4 billion ($8.8 billion) proposal hit opposition almost immediately, with Canberra lawmakers raising concerns about foreign ownership and Singapore’s human rights record.

“The feedback we have received from NYSE Euronext stockholders is very positive, and we would expect NYSE Euronext would, at the very least, meet with us and our advisors to discuss the merits of the proposed combination,” Robert Greifeld, Chief Executive Officer of Nasdaq, said in the statement.

NYSE on Sunday said it was sticking with its deal with Deutsche Boerse, calling the rival offer from Nasdaq OMX Group too risky and counter to the Big Board’s vision.

Proposals outlined on Monday appear harshest for Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L), which may be forced to sell hundreds more branches in addition to the 600 already on the block in order to improve competition on the high street.

For the others, ring-fencing their retail arms could force HSBC (HSBA.L), Barclays (BARC.L) and peers to hold billions of pounds more capital and increase funding costs, potentially squeezing their profits.

The jurors have heard five weeks of prosecution evidence, including dozens of FBI phone taps and testimony of three cooperating witnesses that Rajaratnam cheated to gain an unfair advantage in the stock market between 2003 and March 2009, reaping an illicit $63.8 million.

Through cross-examination and hearings, the defense has previewed its “mosaic theory” of stock trading in Manhattan federal court — the Galleon Group founder’s trades were based on a collection of research, analysis and public information, not corporate secrets whispered to him by high-placed insiders.

The British and Dutch governments said they were disappointed with the result of a referendum on Saturday in which almost 60 percent of voters opposed a repayment deal, the second time the Icelandic public has snubbed an agreement.

The debt was incurred when the two countries compensated their nationals who lost savings in online “Icesave” accounts owned by Landsbanki, one of three Icelandic banks that collapsed in late 2008, triggering economic meltdown in the country of 320,000 people.

The first-quarter reporting period, which begins Monday with results from aluminum company Alcoa Inc (AA.N), follows three months of solid gains that have brought stocks close to two-and-half-year highs.

Some gains have been in anticipation of a strong earnings season, particularly for the energy and other cyclical sectors, analysts said, raising questions about whether this quarter’s reports will be enough to keep the recent uptrend intact.

Finance ministers and central bankers from the 27-nation bloc held a second day of informal talks outside the Hungarian capital on their response to the euro zone debt crisis after Portugal on Wednesday became the third euro zone country to ask for EU and IMF financial aid.

EU ministers said that in return for an estimated 80 billion euros in emergency loans over three years, Lisbon would have to commit to further structural reforms to bring down its budget deficit and debt in a sustainable way.

The decision, which allows Google to expand into the online travel market, comes as new CEO Larry Page revamped the company’s management structure in a bid to accelerate efforts in social networking, mobile and other key businesses.

The Justice Department blessed Google’s $700 million deal with the ticketing software company. Google promised to license the software for five years, to continue to upgrade it, and to establish firewalls to protect ITA clients’ intellectual property.

Banks have been generating most of their profits in recent quarters from dipping into money they previously set aside to cover bad loans. Those reserve reductions make sense if credit losses are stabilizing, which seems to be the case.

But banks cannot reduce their loan loss reserves forever and at this point profit growth must come from making more money from loans and generating more fees, analysts said.

After the October 2009 arrest of Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam, who was wiretapped by the FBI, the world woke to a new era of prosecutorial tactics in insider trading probes.

For those considering crossing the line, the changes may make insider trading seem a vocation not worth the risk.

Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay a $21.4 million fine to settle Justice Department criminal charges and pay more than $48.6 million in disgorgement and interest to settle allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agencies said on Friday.

The allegations date back to 1998 and involved sham contracts, bribes and kickbacks paid by J&J units to officials and doctors in Greece, Iraq, Poland and Romania to help earn millions of dollars in profits, according to authorities.

The magnitude 7.0 aftershock came just hours after people bowed their heads and wept in somber ceremonies to mark a month since a massive earthquake and tsunami that killed up to 25,000 people and set off a crisis of radiation leaks at the nuclear plant by knocking out its cooling systems.

“Even after a month, I still cry when I watch the news,” said Marina Seito, 19, a student at a junior college who recalled being in a basement restaurant in Sendai when the original 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit on March 11. Plates fell and parts of the ceiling crashed down around her.

President Hamid Karzai’s comments and an equally combative statement about the need to shrink U.S. power over the Afghan government were his latest attempts to castigate his foreign partners, as the country tries to take on more responsibility for security and providing services.

The nation’s largest private lender, Kabul Bank, nearly collapsed last year under allegations of mismanagement, cronyism and questionable lending that implicated many members of the Afghan elite with ties to the government.

The preliminary report from the Independent Commission on Banking aims to avoid another catastrophic failure of a financial system dominated by a few large banks too big to be allowed to fail.

The commission, which will make final recommendations in September, said it was considering “forms of retail ring-fencing under which retail banking operations would be carried out by a separate subsidiary within a wider group,” which would still allow some capital transfers within the organization.

The outcome of Sunday’s election – in which three less-polemical candidates collectively captured 44 percent but canceled each other out – reflects the disarray that has plagued Peruvian politics since Fujimori’s 1990 emergence from obscurity.

His daughter, Keiko Fujimori, could end up beating Ollanta Humala in the June 5 runoff, as Humala was the lone candidate advocating a greater state role in the economy to provide poor Peruvians with a greater share of the country’s mining riches.

Any one could hold someone’s life savings.

Safes are washing up along the tsunami-battered coast, and police are trying to find their owners – a unique problem in a country where many people, especially the elderly, still stash their cash at home. By one estimate, some $350 billion worth of yen doesn’t circulate.

With crude prices surging beyond $100 a barrel, and politicians preaching the need to reduce America’s reliance on foreign supplies, companies are now looking for more local sources. One Canadian firm says it’s found it in the tar sands of Utah’s Book Cliffs.

Alberta-based Earth Energy Resources Inc. aims to start with a roughly 62-acre mine here to produce bitumen, a tar-like form of petroleum, from oil-soaked sands. For decades, other Utah operators have used oil sands as a poor-man’s asphalt, and Canada has been wringing oil from the ground for years, but nobody has yet tried to produce petroleum from U.S. soil on such a scale.

A customer recently told Morehouse she was moving her sailboat and Boston Whaler from the Mystic marina to neighboring Rhode Island, about 15 minutes away.

“She’s afraid that so many people are going to be running to Rhode Island,” said Morehouse, who has customers from as far away as Pennsylvania. “If you’re going to travel all the way from Philadelphia, what’s another 6 miles to Rhode Island? We will lose. Connecticut will lose.”

Final results showed the “no” side had just under 60 percent of the votes and the “yes” side about 40 percent.

The result reflects Icelanders’ anger at having to pay for the excesses of their bankers, and complicates the country’s recovery from economic meltdown.

Europe’s ruinous debt crisis and job-sapping economic miseries are reshaping migration trends, with a generation of home-grown talent grabbing at the chance of economic rewards on continents once treated with disdain.

Portuguese are packing their bags for booming Angola and Mozambique in Africa, and for emerging economic powerhouse Brazil, where there is a shortage of engineers to prepare the country for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Spaniards are being drawn to their former colonies in Latin America.

Driven by social media and mobile startups, the money is flowing in the city’s tech industry again, a decade after the dot-com boom minted overnight millionaires and its crash fueled a local recession worse than anything San Francisco has seen in the latest downturn.

A recent tax break for Twitter and other proposals show city officials are hopeful that this latest tech industry prosperity does not portend another bubble and another bust.

Today, solar panels might just outnumber cowboys.

Rural Pendleton is blazing an unlikely renewable energy trail, offering no-interest loans to spark interest in solar power and a group-buy philosophy to get better prices. More than 50 residents installed systems last year, and the program was expanded to more residents and to include businesses this year.

“Even if a rich country is in trouble, it is still in trouble and you need to support it,” Jurgen Ligi told The Associated Press.

Ligi was speaking a day after the 17 euro countries decided to give Portugal about euro80 billion ($115 billion) in rescue loans as long as it signs up to a strict economic adjustment program.

Radiation has covered the area around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant and blanketed parts of the complex, making the job of “decommissioning” the plant – rendering it safe so it doesn’t threaten public health and the environment – a bigger task than usual.

Toshiba Corp., which supplied four of Fukushima’s six reactors, including two on which General Electric Co. collaborated, submitted a roadmap this past week to the plant’s operator for decommissioning the crippled reactors. The study, done with three other companies, projects that it would take about 10 years to remove the fuel rods and the reactors and contain other radioactivity at the site, said Keisuke Omori of Toshiba.

Most travelers don’t think twice about it – although there’s something unsettling about easing into your seat and finding the armrest still has an ashtray built in.

But fliers may be more worried than usual after a 5-foot hole opened in the roof of a 15-year-old Southwest jet earlier this month. Southwest quickly grounded 79 of its older Boeing 737s for inspections.

A 5-foot section of the passenger cabin roof of a 15-year-old Boeing 737-300 tore off April 1, forcing the Southwest Airlines flight to make an emergency landing.

None of the 118 people aboard was seriously injured, but light-headed passengers were banged around the cabin and had to quickly put on overhead oxygen masks as pilots made a rapid descent.

The New York Stock Exchange has lost most of its famous shoulder-to-shoulder bustle in the age of computerized trading. So it’s hoping its status as an icon of American finance will be a popular draw for cocktail receptions, analyst presentations and other festivities.

The exchange, where traders have nervously watched tickers and shouted orders for more than 100 years, is already available for some events. It wants to expand to 1,000 a year, double the number from three years ago.