COST Financial News

(Reuters) — National Australia Bank (OTC:NABZY) is planning to cut 222 jobs in the personal lending, technology, corporate finance and client coverage departments, the Australian Financial Review reported on Wednesday.

By Marcela Ayres and Bernardo Caram

battery energy storage systems in the country, offering up to 40% of the capital cost of the project. The government has set aside Rs3,760 crore from this year's budget for the scheme aimed at creating 4,000 megawatt hours (MWh) battery energy storage systems (BESS) by 2030-31. «India has planned to have 50% of its total energy share from non-fossil fuels by 2030.

Border Roads Organisation will construct an airfield at an estimated cost of Rs 218 crore at the strategic Nyoma belt of eastern Ladakh.

By Ann Saphir and Michael S. Derby

By Yasin Ebrahim

Interest rates are likely to come down next year, Royal Bank of Canada chief executive Dave McKay said, allowing for the lender’s customers to avoid major pain when the majority of its mortgage book reprices in 2025 and 2026.

Rising home prices have sent property values soaring over the past five years, and for some lucky buyers who snapped up homes in 2018, that’s amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra equity.

AU Small Finance Bank Ltd aims to use its premium credit card offering to attract new deposits and retain existing customers seeking more banking services. On Tuesday, the SFB introduced the Zenith+ metal card, with an annual fee of ₹4,999, excluding taxes. It offers customers complimentary rounds of golf, free movie tickets, as well as other benefits.

By Nandita Bose and David Shepardson

A weak party can get a much stronger opponent to back down, game theory explains, by signaling it is willing to take extreme actions and bear steep costs. But that sort of brinkmanship arguably works only if you don’t have to actually fight—and lose—repeatedly. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan has been open about her willingness to take on hard cases and lose.

Bank OZK had two branches in rural Arkansas when chief executive officer George Gleason bought it in 1979. The Little Rock lender today has billions of dollars in commercial real-estate loans, including for properties in Miami and Manhattan, where it is helping fund the construction of a 1,000-foot-tall office and luxury residential tower on Fifth Avenue. Regional banks across the country followed a similar playbook, gorging on commercial real-estate loans and related investments in big cities over the past decade.

technology companies this year. Chief executive Daniel Ek has said he wants Spotify to be the world’s largest audio company, spanning audiobooks, education, sports and news. Podcasts are only the first step toward Spotify’s goal of evolving from a music-streaming company to an audio giant, generating $100 billion in revenue by 2030.

Princeton University takes top honors in our new ranking of the best colleges in the U.S. What makes a college like Princeton great? There are the facilities and the faculties, the coursework and the camaraderie, the skills and experiences and knowledge that prepare students for their lives and their careers. No doubt these are important.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India does not limit the number of demat accounts that an investor can open. To be sure, many investors have multiple demat accounts, usually to segregate their investments. The same goes for trading accounts but that though depends on the number of brokers they are dealing with. And most brokers won’t let you link your existing demat account to their trading account. They would rather insist you open a combined trading and demat account with them.

Jason Furman argues “The Fed Should Carefully Aim for a Higher Inflation Target" (op-ed, Aug. 21). Why does the Federal Reserve mark 2% as the inflation line in the first place? Boosting it to 2.5% or 3% doesn’t appear to be such a serious departure.

Energy investment in Africa needs to more than double by the end of the decade if the continent is to meet its energy and climate goals. However, high costs are putting off much-needed investment in the region’s plentiful clean-energy resources and huge reserves of critical minerals, the International Energy Agency said. “African countries have huge energy potential, including a spectacular range and quality of renewable-energy resources," said Fatih Birol, executive director of the Paris-based agency in a report published jointly with the African Development Bank on Wednesday.

India's long-term economic growth present plenty of room for Indian and Scotch whiskies to prosper in the world's biggest whisky market, an industry association said on Wednesday.Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) also said that the proposed reduction in import duty by India under a free trade agreement between New Delhi and London would not only help boost exports of Scotch whiskey from the UK, but consumers here will also get more choice as smaller producers enter the market. India and the UK are negotiating a free trade agreement. It will also benefit India-Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) brands by reducing import costs. The association also said that imported Scotch whisky will pose «very little» direct competition to local Indian whisky because of its small size here. A large portion of the export of Scotch whisky to India is in bulk, and the bottled versions are only 24 per cent of exports.

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey hinted on Wednesday that the central bank was close to ending a prolonged policy of raising interest rates, easing worries about a cost-of-living crisis. «I think we are much nearer now to the top of the cycle,» Bailey told a panel of cross-party lawmakers gathered to question the BoE chief on the state of the UK economy with UK inflation the highest among G7 nations. «And I'm not therefore saying we're at the top of the cycle because we've got a meeting to come but I think we are much nearer to it,» he added. The pound dropped against the dollar and euro on the comments as traders bet that the BoE may already decide to pause hiking rates at a regular monetary policy meeting later this month. UK annual inflation stands at 6.8 percent, above the five percent Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is aiming to reach by the end of the year. Sunak at the start of 2023 said he hoped to halve UK inflation when the level stood above 10 percent. Bailey on Wednesday added that «the fall in inflation will continue». «I think it (the fall) will be quite marked by the end of this year.» Global inflation soared after Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent energy and food prices rocketing. Inflation has been fuelled over the past 18 months also owing to supply constraints as the world emerged from pandemic lockdowns. Surging inflation resulted in the BoE hiking its key interest rate for a 14th time in a row last month to 5.25 percent, a 15-year high. The central bank is tasked by the UK government with keeping annual inflation at around two percent. A leading think-tank on Wednesday said working-age households in Britain were experiencing the worst growth in living standards since at least the 1950s. Typical,

By Scott DiSavino and Nerijus Adomaitis

Investing.com — Here is your Pro Recap of the biggest analyst cuts you may have missed since yesterday: downgrades at Block, Stem, General Mills , FMC, and Agiliti.