Category: Market

Canada’s retail sales fell 0.2% to $66.3 billion in February, down less than market estimates, the country’s statistical authority said Friday. The market expectation for retail sales was to show a decline of 0.6%. The figure for January was revised upwards to a gain of 1.6%, from a 1.4% increase. In February, retail sales fell in four of nine subsectors, representing 48% of retail trade, Statistics Canada said in a statement. Lower sales at gas stations and fuel vendors led the decrease in retail sales last month, it added. Core retail sales, which exclude gas stations and motor vehicle and parts dealers, rose 0.1% in February.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Cypriot athlete Pavlos Kontides topped the Laser Sailors world ranking, as he is back in the top spot after eight months, and for the fourth time in his career. According to a press release, Kontides’ consecutive successes in the last year brought him to the first place of the world ranking, to which he returns after eight months. This is the fourth time in his career. He climbed to the top spot with 875 points, followed by Croatian Tonci Stipanovic, with 869 points. Stipanovic is on the same training team as Kontides. Britain’s Michael Beckett (852p.) and Eliot Hanson (843p.), are in third and fourth place respectively. It is noted that, in six races in 2022 and 2023, Kontides won four medals, a fourth and a sixth place, ‘showing unparalleled stability and consistency’ that landed him to the top spot in the world. The 2017 and 2018 Golden World Champion is currently in Hyeres ahead of the second World Cup of the season, taking place between April 24 and 29.

Source: Cyprus News Agency

French supermarket giant Carrefour on Wednesday became the latest employer to allow women extra time off if they suffer from endometriosis, a medical condition that can cause excessive period cramps. The move puts the spotlight on a condition that affects around one in ten women, but is often overlooked by the public and even medical professionals.

Source: France24.com

The skeleton of a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex, a creature that roamed the Earth 67 million years ago, sold for 5.5 million Swiss francs ($6.13 million) in Zurich on Tuesday. It was the first time in Europe and the third time worldwide that an entire T-Rex skeleton of exceptional quality has been offered at auction.

Source: France24.com

The European Commission has today adopted a proposal to adjust and further strengthen the EU’s existing bank crisis management and deposit insurance (CMDI) framework, with a focus on medium-sized and smaller banks. The EU’s banking sector, which includes a strong crisis management framework, has become much more resilient in recent years. Financial institutions in the EU are well capitalised, highly liquid and closely supervised. However, experience has shown that many failing medium-sized and smaller banks have been managed with solutions outside the resolution framework. This sometimes involved using taxpayers’ money instead of the bank’s required internal resources or private, industry-funded safety nets (deposit guarantee schemes and resolution funds). Today’s proposal will enable authorities to organise the orderly market exit for a failing bank of any size and business model, with a broad range of tools. In particular, it will facilitate the use of industry-funded safety nets to shield depositors in banking crises, such as by transferring them from an ailing bank to a healthy one. Such use of safety nets must only be a complement to the banks’ internal loss absorption capacity, which remains the first line of defence. Overall, this will further preserve financial stability, protect taxpayers and depositors, and support the real economy and its competitiveness. The proposal has the following objectives: Preserving financial stability and protecting taxpayers’ money The proposal facilitates the use of deposit guarantee schemes in crisis situations to shield depositors (natural persons, businesses, public entities, etc.) from bearing losses, where this is necessary to avoid contagion to other banks and negative effects on the community and the economy. By relying on industry-funded safety nets (such as deposit guarantee schemes and resolution funds), the proposal also better protects taxpayers who do not have to step in to preserve financial stability. Deposit guarantee schemes can only be used for this purpose after banks have exhausted their internal loss absorption capacity, and only for banks that were already earmarked for resolution in the first place. Shielding the real economy from the impact of bank failure The proposed rules will allow authorities to fully exploit the many advantages of resolution as a key component of the crisis management toolbox. In contrast with liquidation, resolution can be less disruptive for clients as they keep access to their accounts, for example by being transferred to another bank. Moreover, the bank’s critical functions are preserved. This benefits the economy and society, more broadly. Better protection for depositors The level of coverage of pound 100,000 per depositor and bank, as set out in the Deposit Guarantee Scheme Directive, remains for all eligible EU depositors. However, today’s proposal harmonises further the standards of depositor protection across the EU. The new framework extends depositor protection to public entities (i.e. hospitals, schools, municipalities), as well as client money deposited in certain types of client funds (i.e. by investment companies, payment institutions, e-money institutions). The proposal includes additional measures to harmonise the protection of temporary high balances on bank accounts in excess of pound 100,000 linked to specific life events (such as inheritance or insurance indemnities). Next steps The legislative package will now be discussed by the European Parliament and Council. Background In its statement of 16 June 2022, the Eurogroup noted that the Banking Union remains incomplete and agreed, as an immediate step, that the work on the Banking Union should focus on strengthening the crisis management and deposit insurance framework, with the aim of completing the legislative work during this institutional cycle. Other important projects, such as the establishment of the third and outstanding pillar of the Banking Union – European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS) – and further progress on market integration, would be re-assessed subsequently, after the CMDI reform. In its latest report on the Banking Union, the European Parliament also supported the need for a review of the crisis management and deposit insurance framework to improve its functioning and predictability to manage bank failures.

Source: Cyprus News Agency

‘Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.’ This is how India’s Foreign Minister, S. Jaishankar, summed up his country’s stance vis-a-vis western pressure to take their side in the Ukraine conflict. How is the war changing the balance of power and wisdom between the so-called developed and developing world? To discuss this, Oksana is joined by Krishen Mehta a former Partner with PwC and now a Senior Global Justice Fellow at Yale University. He is also a Board member of the American Committee for US Russia Accord, and of the Center for Citizen Initiatives. He has travelled to Russia, visited Moscow, Crimea, St Petersburg, Kazan, Saratov, and other cities.

Source: Russia Today

Russian assets frozen by the G7 nations will remain “immobilized” until the Ukraine conflict is resolved and Moscow pays reparations, the group of leading western economies has announced.

“Any resolution to the conflict must ensure Russia pays for the damage it has caused,” the bloc’s foreign ministers stated following this week’s meeting in Japan.

The ministers also announced their intention to intensify the economic restrictions on Russia and to punish third parties for any attempts to “evade and undermine our sanctions measures.” They must “cease assistance to Russia’s war, or face severe costs,” the G7 warned.

The group, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and US, has condemned Moscow for launching its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022.

The intragovernmental group of leading economies was formed in the 1970s, but its relative economic clout has since declined, as other nations, including Brazil, China, India, and South Africa, continue to grow. These four, along with Russia, form an informal group known as BRICS, which contributes more to global GDP than the G7 nations, according to British research firm Acorn Macro Consulting.

The G7 has been one of the primary vehicles for formulating punitive actions, such as a price cap on Russian energy, which member states have sought to enforce through the threat of secondary sanctions against buyers that violate the restrictions. There have been claims in the media that Japan is buying Russian crude at prices over the prescribed cap of $60 per barrel.

The US and its allies have frozen a reported $300 billion of Russian foreign reserves, as well as the assets of private individuals who they deem to be ‘oligarchs’ that are close to the Russian government. Kiev and Washington want the frozen funds to go to post-war reconstruction efforts in Ukraine, but many Western nations have said that simply expropriating the money would violate their laws.

Last week, the Russian central bank reported that the nation’s foreign reserves once again surpassed the $600 billion benchmark. The all-time high was recorded on February 18, 2022, days before the Ukraine conflict broke out, when Russia possessed $643.2 billion in reserves.

Russia rejects the Western claim that the military operation in Ukraine was unprovoked, saying it was in response to a proxy war against Moscow conducted by Washington to undermine competition on the world stage.

Source: Russia Today

Bank of Cyprus has notified its Russian customers that their accounts are set to be closed, Forbes reported on Tuesday, citing Main Partner Trust, a company that provides legal and financial services in Cyprus.

The information was reportedly confirmed by an unnamed source in the country’s banking sector.

Russian clients of Bank of Cyprus, the nation’s biggest banking institution, began receiving the notifications several days ago, according to Aljona Sakharova, a non-executive director of Main Partner Trust.

The letters inform customers that their accounts will be closed within two months of the notification because their user data does not comply with the so-called Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements.

The firm also said that among the reasons for closing accounts may be Russian tax residency or income from a sanctioned business in Russia.

Accounts may also be closed for Russians holding so-called ‘atypical’ residence permits in the country, such as Digital Nomad or Category F. The latter is commonly granted to people who possess and have fully and freely at their disposal a secured annual income that is sufficient to provide them with a decent living in Cyprus.

According to the source in the banking sector, Bank of Cyprus is not the only lender in the country that is closing the accounts of Russians. Local subsidiaries including divisions of the Greek Hellenic Bank and Alpha Bank are also doing so.

The move is reportedly attributable to concern about falling under US sanctions from doing business with Russian clients.

Cyprus has been known for its lax banking and financial services supervision, which has earned it much criticism in the EU as a money-laundering haven.

In January, the country’s finance minister said that the authorities had frozen about €1.5 billion ($1.6 billion) in Russian-linked deposits and assets in accordance with the bloc’s sanctions against Moscow.

Source: Russia Today

The BrahMos supersonic cruise missile jointly developed by India and Russia is attracting a wide range of customers, although only countries “friendly” to New Delhi and Moscow will be able purchase it, the CEO of BrahMos Aerospace, Atul Rane, has told RT.

“The BrahMos weapon system has no parallel,” Rane said in an interview published on Monday. “It has massive advantages: speed; time; almost no defense against it.”

Another strength of the hardware is that it is “a universal missile,” the CEO explained. “It’s exactly the same missile which is launched from land, from sea, from sub-sea. And it’s launchable from an air platform also.”

“We’ve been able to put the best of Russia and India together,” Rane added, also expressing his belief that joint enterprises would serve as the future for major weapons projects.

According to Rane, BrahMos is proof of the effectiveness of such cooperation. The Indian-Russian enterprise was established in 1998, with its first missile test flight taking place just three years later.

A significant amount of time was saved because India and Russia shared technologies with each other, rather than having to invent them from scratch, the CEO explained.

The development of BrahMos over the past two decades has seen its strike range increase to more than 250 miles (400km) from approximately 180 miles (290km). The missile travels at Mach 2.8 – almost three times the speed of sound – and is designed to destroy high-value targets such as warships or land-based command centers and bunkers.

“Everyone wants the BrahMos missile system,” Rane insisted, noting that the Philippines would receive its first batch of missiles soon, while a deal with Indonesia is close to being concluded.

According to the CEO, nations in South-East Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa have all expressed interest in purchasing the system. “Well, who do we sell to? Well, it has to be sold to countries who are friendly to India and acceptable to the government of Russia also,” he stated.

Source: Russia Today