Investing

The Vatican has sold charitable assets to pay down a €242m loan that was partly used to fund a luxury London property development it says caused the Catholic Church “huge losses”, people with direct knowledge of the loans said. The loan provided by Credit Suisse was secured against a portfolio of securities that the Holy

Paradigm shifts happen slowly, then all at once. Covid-19 has shown us this. Climate change has too. Pandemics and global warming are linked. So are rising flood waters, violent hurricanes and recent wildfires in California that threw up enough smoke to darken east coast skies. Business is usually ahead of government on coping with change.

Known primarily for student loans, Sallie Mae got its start in 1973 as a government entity specifically servicing federal student loans. After it went through the process of cutting ties with the federal government between 1997 and 2004, Sallie Mae became a publicly-traded consumer bank. Though private student loans are still part of its menu

The Hong Kong asset management association has warned that a Brexit-related overhaul of the EU’s retail fund rules could have the unintended consequence of undermining the dominance of European funds in Asia. Sally Wong, chief executive of the HK Investment Funds Association, said any move by the EU to unpick the outsourcing model on which

I have been lucky to have worked with a lot of clever, funny people and I thought of them all last week as I watched Boris Johnson make an online speech to his Conservative party’s virtual annual conference. There he stood, hands air-jabbing, hair skew-whiff, as he grumbled about having to talk to a camera

First mover advantage is a term used to describe the benefits of being the first company into a market segment. This can be used to describe a whole company or a particular product or service offering. In this article, we’ll look at how first mover advantage works and what it can mean for a company.

Donald Trump marked his return to public rallies on Saturday with a speech from the White House balcony in which he attempted to put his hospitalisation for Covid-19 behind him and appeal to black and Latino voters. “I’m feeling great,” he declared to hundreds of supporters on the South Lawn wearing “Back the Blue” tops

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, has rejected a higher $1.8tn fiscal stimulus offer from the White House, dashing hopes of a breakthrough in the negotiations. In a letter to Democratic lawmakers on Saturday, Ms Pelosi said the Trump administration’s latest proposal marked “one step forward, two steps back” and there

A dominant global financial center has international connectedness, diversity, and expertise in a variety of financial products and services. The Z/Yen Group, a London-based commercial think tank, publishes the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) every six months to provide a ranking of the world’s top financial centers according to their levels of international competitiveness. Below is a summary of

It took Donald Trump to persuade Almedia Gilliam to finally vote. Ms Gilliam, a 72-year-old black woman from south Philadelphia, had never done so before. But her enmity for the US president, who she suspects is a Ku Klux Klan sympathiser, is such that she is planning to cast her first ballot next month —

Nelson Peltz speaking at the 2019 Delivering Alpha conference in New York on Sept. 19, 2019. Adam Jeffery | CNBC Company: Invesco Ltd. (IVZ) Business: Independent investment management company. Invesco provides a range of investment capabilities and outcomes, which are delivered through a set of investment vehicles, to help clients achieve their investment objectives. Its

Mayors in Northern England have asked MPs across the region to force the government to improve the financial support offered to people and businesses hit by local lockdown measures and prevent tens of thousands of job losses. With the government set to announce on Monday that many hospitality businesses in Merseyside, and possibly elsewhere, must

High-net-worth individuals tend to have more complex financial needs than most retail consumers. That’s why private banks offer a wide swath of services under one roof, from investment management to trust and estate planning. Wealthy clients are typically assigned a dedicated private banker (a.k.a. relationship manager), who is a single point of contact. Key Takeaways Most of these

Ed Douglas’s quixotic and densely packed history of Himalayan peoples is not the book to read if you are looking for an easy contemporary analysis of the China-India confrontation on the roof of the world or the ecological catastrophe in the mountains that give birth to Asia’s great rivers. The modern-day tale of Ngawang Sangdrol,

John Henry, owner of Liverpool FC and Boston Red Sox, is in talks to publicly list his sports holdings in a merger with a blank-cheque company, two people familiar with the matter said. The move would value his company at $8bn in a proposed tie-up with Billy Beane, the US baseball executive depicted by Brad

Maintaining a valid and current estate plan is vitally necessary in order to ensure the efficient and orderly dispersion of assets after a person dies. However, even a small mistake can create huge problems during the settlement process, and in many cases, these errors are impossible for anyone to correct. There are several key errors

Donald Trump plans to host his first campaign event since testing positive for Covid-19, appearing at a hastily-organised White House gathering on Saturday afternoon that will focus on the theme of law and order. The event is expected to included hundreds of attendees and the US president will appear from the White House balcony, according

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Thursday advised investors to not buy shares of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, simply because President Donald Trump touted the company’s potential coronavirus treatment.  Regeneron’s stock was higher by 2% on Thursday. In a video posted Wednesday, Trump claimed that Regeneron’s experimental antibody treatment for Covid-19, which the president received for his illness, was “a cure.” 

Hundreds of people critical to the UK’s fight against Covid-19, including medical staff and community volunteers, have received awards in a Queen’s Birthday Honours list delayed to allow recognition of those combating the epidemic and its effects. Those honoured in the list, announced on Friday, included Felicia Kwaku, associate director of nursing at King’s College

Japan has become one of the top 10 most popular destinations for U.S. students studying abroad. According to the President of the Institute of International Education, Dr. Allen E. Goodman, “International experience is one of the most important components of a 21st-century education, and study abroad should be viewed as an essential element of a college degree.”

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Thursday highlighted multiple parts of the market where he sees stock prices rising and can continue to rise, whether lawmakers in Washington agree to another round of stimulus spending or not. American consumers and small businesses, grappling with double-digit unemployment and a pandemic-induced downturn, are waiting to see if lawmakers will

Germany’s hospitals are bracing themselves for an influx of Covid-19 patients in the coming weeks as health experts warn of an “exponential” rise in new infections. The country has recorded one of the lowest numbers of Covid fatalities among the large industrialised countries, and its infection rates have been far less alarming than other EU

Dear readers, People will ask their doctor to sign them off from work, as needed, to provide evidence that their illness is acute. Not President Donald Trump, who demands that his doctors stand in front of the TV cameras declaiming on his rapid recovery from coronavirus. He demanded his doctors gave permission for him to

The foreign exchange market (forex or FX) is a decentralized global market in which trading does not occur on an exchange and does not have a physical address for doing business. Unlike equities, which are traded through exchanges worldwide, such as the New York Stock Exchange or the London Stock Exchange, foreign exchange transactions take place

Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein sees speculative elements across markets for stocks and bonds. Blankfein, a billionaire who served as Goldman’s CEO from 2006 to 2018, said Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that low interest rates were essentially creating free money for big institutional investors. After keeping rates low for years after the 2008

Northern Ireland has toughened penalties for breaking coronavirus rules and made it compulsory to wear face coverings in more locations as the region’s devolved government grapples with surging infections and a sharp post-lockdown recession. France has moved another four towns into a state of “maximum alert” against the pandemic, closing bars and imposing strict rules

Ivan Morozov, painted by Valentin Serov . . .  © Alamy  . . . and by Konstantin Korovin © Getty Images A century of Russian society through the prism of a painting collection: Natalya Semenova’s biography of Ivan Morozov has jewel-like focus yet epic scope, reads as sumptuously as a 19th-century novel, and makes stunning use of material still emerging

The global markets are really just one big interconnected web. We frequently see the prices of commodities and futures impact the movements of currencies, and vice versa. The same is true with the relationship between currencies and bond spread (the difference between countries’ interest rates): the price of currencies can impact the monetary policy decisions

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman has just completed a pivot that began more than a decade ago. With the announcement Thursday that Morgan Stanley is acquiring investment manager Eaton Vance for $7 billion, Gorman is adding heft and scale to the smallest of the New York-based bank’s three main businesses: the manufacturer of mutual funds

David Keohane in Paris France has moved another four towns into a state of “maximum alert” against the Covid-19 pandemic, closing bars and imposing strict rules in restaurants as cases climb and hospitals come under increasing strain. “The health situation unfortunately continues to deteriorate in France,” said French health minister Olivier Veran on Thursday during