Over the past few weeks we’ve brought you several reports regarding the increasingly worrisome LIBOR scandal. The investigation into interest rate-rigging debacle is quickly snowballing and analysts have now begun wondering if “16 of the world’s largest banks have perpetrated the biggest fraud in history.”
This is what happens when you couple shoddy detective work with a good legal team. Auction Alliance has won its third straight victory in line with exonerating itself from any penalty relating to the Appelbaum auction rigging scandal.
This is a great story, of a web comic author whose work was stolen by another website, who didn’t credit him. He took it personally. He’s also won the Internet.
On the back of numerous electricity price hikes comes the news that Eskom blew more than R36 million on staff parties and team building experiences last year. The parastatal has however come out and defended the expenditure saying fun days are used to commit workers to keeping the lights on.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA), the regulator of all providers of financial services in the UK, has today confirmed that Barclays was definitely not acting alone, nor was this an isolated case in the authorities’ probe of banks rigging a key interbank interest rate.
On the back of news that Barclays bank was punished with a record fine of £290 million by UK authorities for interest rate manipulation, comes the speculation that the crisis, said to involve numerous banks around the world, could help push investors toward South African shores.
Sanlam’s National Start Something Day competition is in full swing, and with R200 000 at their disposal, they’ve been helping people to start the things they’ve always wanted to do but never done. What would you like to start? We’ve all got that thing in the back of our minds: that blank canvass stuffed in […]
Well this is terribly worrying. Yesterday, Barclays bank – one of the biggest banks in the world – was fined a record £290 million for attempting to manipulate the world’s benchmark borrowing rate – the Libor. This is a huge blow to the bank’s reputation and raises questions over the future of chief executive Bob Diamond. Up to 40 other global banks face being named and shamed too.
Frank.net sell Life Cover, Disability Cover, Serious Illness Cover, and Salary Protection directly to people without using brokers. They’re backed by Munich Re – the world’s leading re-insurer – so you never have to worry if they actually have the money. They tell it like it is, and don’t hide behind big words or misleading […]
Cyprus has become the fifth euro zone country to seek emergency funding from Brussels, and it may require a bailout amount worth up to half the size of its economy. We’re not talking the kind of numbers that Spain and Greece have been after, but when half of your economy is looking a bit worse for wear, it’s not ideal.
It’s quite rad to be in that gang of famous people who own their own islands. But you’ve done something particularly impressive when the aerial photo of your island is actually a satellite photograph. You gotta give it to Oracle boos, Larry Ellison – he really nailed it with this latest $500 – $600 million […]
Here’s a Friday-feel-good story for you all, executive chairman and CEO of Richemont, Johann Rupert, took home €3.6 million for the year and instead of buying a new yacht or diamond-infused body lotion he promptly donated it to charity.
Soon the South African Revenue Service will have the power to search and seize relevant material without the need for a warrant, a tax expert has today told the City Press. The Tax Administration Bill could “have serious and significant ramifications” for taxpayers, the expert continued. However, this doesn’t appear to be a bad thing, if you’ve got nothing to hide.
Forbes on Tuesday released its list of the 100 highest paid athletes, boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., nicknamed “Money,” is in the top spot with earnings of $85 million. He is a solid 23 million ahead of second placed Manny Pacquiao, and miles ahead of the only South African on the list, Ernie Els, who is in 91st place with earnings of $17,4 million.
Yesterday, the Western Cape High court handed down a judgement that ruled that National Consumer Commissioner, Mamodupi Mohlala-Mulaudzi, acted outside of her powers when she summoned three Auction Alliance executives, including Rael Levitt, to appear before the National Consumer Commission earlier this year. It’s a notable victory for Auction Alliance, but doesn’t rule out a criminal investigation into possible fraud.
A recent survey has found that South Africa has the highest ATM withdrawal fees out of a group of 27 countries which includes the likes of the United Kingdom and the USA.
While no official statements have been made by anyone, an external analysis is showing the first signs of Greece leaving the Eurozone. For those of us in SA, where the markets are highly reactive to what’s happening in Europe, could this bring the relief and stability that we’ve been waiting for?
Former T20 cricket enigma and ex-multi billionaire, Allen Stanford, has been sentenced to 110 years in jail for defrauding investors of $7 billion. Stanford was also ordered to pay back $5,9 billion, which he doesn’t have, because he lost everything.
Every year, investment consulting firm Mercer releases its list of the most expensive cities in the world. Last year, Luanda (the capital city of Angola) held the top spot, but this year sees Tokyo taking over as the most expensive city in the world. See the full top ten list after the jump.
Western sanctions against Iran’s oil exports have shown that they have fallen by an estimated 40 per cent since the start of the year, according to the International Energy Agency. Separately, the UAE is nearing completion of an oil route that totally avoids Iran. Unlucky, Iran.
Yahoo has been criticised in the past for neglecting its original core business of being a search engine, and it may experience more of that with its latest exapnsion into content publishing. However, it has described its latest partnership with CNBC as a key strategy to becoming a “premium media network.”
As the American government continues its internal adoption of cloud computing services, Google and Microsoft have been scrambling for contracts – what with their being lucrative and influential and such. Sucks to be Google, then, because the FAA just awarded $91 million to Microsoft to have their platform transition to the Microsoft Office 360 cloud service.
Kicking off on 1 July, FNB will no longer charge for card purchases on a number of their accounts and will also reduce fees by up to as much as 11% in certain cases. Click through for the full breakdown.
Cell C’s Alan Knott-Craig Senior says he’s not surprised by the Cabinet’s decision to turn its nose up at a proposal from Korea Telecom to buy a 20% stake in Telkom. Why: because in the past, foreign companies have let South Africa down. He says governments, especially in developing countries, have to be involved in telecommunications penetration.
South Africa’s largest bank has announced that it will be taking over Edcon’s unsecured lending portfolio, which is fancy speak for all of its store cards. This is the bank’s largest investment since the takeover by Barclays a few years ago.
You might have picked up in the Morning Spice headlines that the Nasdaq stock exchange said it “owe[d] the industry an apology”. It’s gone a little further now, and says it will set aside $40 million to reimburse investors that suffered losses due to technical problems on Facebook’s first day of trading.
Following the announcement that Cell C had drastically dropped their prepaid cell rates, Alan Knott-Craig Senior has seemingly checkmated the competition yet again. Cell C announced today that they would also be reducing their contract rates with the launch of six “Straight Up” packages for postpaid and Top-Up customers on 22 June 2012. This is big.
Sony shareholders looked on as they watched the electronics and entertainment giant’s shares fall below 1 000 yen for the first time since 1980 yesterday. The Tokyo stock market took a dive early Monday after a dismal performance from Wall Street, bad US job data, and amid other global economic concerns.
If you thought things were tight in Greece, they certainly don’t look too much better in Spain. In the first three months of this year, nearly €100 billion in capital has left the country. Put differently: about 10% of the country’s GDP.
As Bloomberg pointed out the other day, South Africa’s credit rating may come under pressure as growth in Africa’s biggest economy slows and the government faces the prospect of bailing out the state-owned road agency. That prospect became more of a reality today when deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe said government is looking into a special appropriations bill to give Sanral a cash injection to allow it to service its R20 billion debt.