Robert Zoellick, the president of World Bank has elected the Chinese economist, Justin Yifu Lin as its chief economist. With this move, their ties with China are strengthened.
Lin is a top economist from China who is an advisor to the central government and at present heads China Center for Economic Research, a think-tank at Peking University. Zoellick told reporters that with an experienced person in rural development like Lin at the helm of their bank, the bank will be able to strengthen its working capacity with China.
Lin is aged 56 years and will be succeeding the post of the Frenchman, Francois Bourguignon. He had started his career researching the economic development in China while placing emphasis on agricultural economics and the redistribution of wealth.
Though he studied economics in China, he had earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago, United States.
The Spanish GAAP has been released in Spain:
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The Spanish Parliament had just recently adopted a new Plan General de Contabilidad, which is the Spanish GAAP. This guide was released as a consequence of the corporate and accounting law reforms that were released in Spain.
This guide is to be effective for numerous years starting on and after January 1, 2008. the guide is applicable to both individual companies and all the unlisted consolidated groups. The listed consolidated groups are not mentioned here as they are subject to IFRSs that is adopted by the EU.
It is the IFRSs that had inspired the new Spanish GAAP. However it is not equivalent to it as there are differences existing between the two. A Spanish pocket guide has been published for the new Spanish GAAP and includes a summary of the important changes made in corporate law that was approved in parallel. It also offers a guide to the important differences between the Spanish GAAP and the International Financial Reporting Standards.
The international currency market saw New Zealand recording a 23 year record high in its rates against the usually strong US dollar. This record post float high of the New Zealand dollar was recorded on Monday, amidst an increased risk appetite that was experienced in the overall currency market.
Records show that the New Zealand dollar had last recorded itself at being 0.1% at 0.81% after reaching a high that was as high as 0.8111. All this information is based on the information that was provided by Reuters data.
This news has led to an increased interest in potential investors in New Zealand for the feasibility of gaining a profit with the investment made in New Zealand, in the near future.
Brazil records an 8 year high by reaching its currency’s strongest level:
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Wednesday was a memorable day for Brazil’s currency as it reached its strongest level after a span of eight years. This high was because of the foreign investors who had sold dollars so that the money generated could be used to buy local securities.
In addition to this, the local stocks had also hit an eight week high with the gains obtained in blue-chip miner Vale. In addition to this, the real BRBY, Brazil’s currency had recorded a gain from 0.52% to 1.725% per US dollar. This is the strongest closing position for Brazil’s currency since March 23, 2000.
One of the major traders on the market states that there have been some good inflows with foreign investors entering the trading market.
In order to find out if the third country parent institutions of EU subsidiaries are being placed into supervision that is equivalent to or like the services provided by Europe, the European Union Capital Requirements Directive and Financial Conglomerates Directive has sent EU member state supervisors for assessment.
However in a bid to avoid duplication of work, the European Commission has asked the Committee of European Insurance and Occupational Pensions and the Committee of European Insurance to look out for the equivalent of some third country supervisions.
With this in mind, the CEBS and CEIOPS have completed their assessments of the Swiss and Untied States financial regulatory authorities. The final report released on Switzerland revealed that the Swiss supervisory system is indeed similar to Europe’s.
A new software and data analysis tool was launched by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This tool is called Financial Explorer in the SEC website which is used in helping investors make an analysis of the financial results of the various public companies.
With Financial Explorer, investors can use it to automatically generate financial ratios, charts and graphs that display information it receives from important financial statements. The information that can be analyzed using the tool includes earnings, cash flows, liabilities and assets.
The information received can then be compared across competing public companies. This financial tool Financial Explorer uses all the financial information that is provided to the SEC in the form of interactive data in its extensible Business Reporting Language.
Late trading that took place on Monday led to European shares extending their gains to more than 2%. These gains were led by the strength of financial stocks like Barclays.
It was at 1558 GMT that all of Friday’s losses were wiped out by the FTSEurofirst 300 index of the top European shares. The profit located here was a 2.1% profit at 1,337.12 points, which help overcome Friday’s losses.
The reason the banks were the top performers in this late trading profit were the decision of the British government in temporarily nationalizing Northern Rock, acquisition talk and an optimistic expectation for dividends.
People are today cautious with the market being volatile and down one day, only to climb up another day. This is why most investors are investing with a short term view.
The Large Value Transfer System receives C$75 million from Bank of Canada:
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C$75 million is the amount the Bank of Canada had left in the Large Value Transfer System on Friday, 15th February. In addition to this huge amount, the bank had also left another C$75 million in the system yesterday, Monday 18th February. This news was announced by the central bank.
Usually, the bank leaves a balance amount of C$25 million in the system. This huge amount of money is always left in the bank to facilitate the easy settlement of balances that exist between different banks.
It is the credit crunch that had hit Canada in August that had led to the Bank of Canada setting these huge amounts of money quite frequently, in the system. This was the only way the bank could handle the credit crunch, without any complications.
US prosecutors have disclosed that the Export-Import Bank of the United States had recovered more than $104 million in the form of defaulted loans. These loans were from paper products manufacturer, Asia Pulp & Paper Co. Ltd, and various one time units.
It was three of the Singapore based Asia Pulp’s one time Indonesian operating companies PT Pabrik Kertas Tiiwi Kimia, PT Indah Kiat Pulp & Paper and PT Pindo Deli Pulp & Paper Mills that had defaulted on these loans. These firms had defaulted on a total of 13 loan agreements with the bank.
Prosecutors have mentioned that after the order filed on February 6th, Asia Pulp has unconditionally guaranteed repayment of not all, but three of the loans.
The consortium of the regulators of the world securities, the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) has declared that investors have to be provided with clear and accurate information about the accounting standards of publicly traded companies.
Basically, IOSCO is worried that with the convergence of the present global accounting standards, all the investors of a company may think that company accounts are comparable. In fact, they think that these accounts are comparable even when they are prepared following different GAAPs.
This is a phenomenon that usually takes place when national standards state that they are based on but, may not follow all of the International Financial Reporting Standards. This si usually resorted to if a jurisdiction adopts some IFRSs as its national GAAP or when an IFRS is modified on adoption.