Category: Banking and Finance

Dec 22, 2008 (LBO) – Golden Key Credit Card Company is being rehabilitated after it was mismanaged and its chief executive has resigned, Sri Lanka’s Ceylinco group chief Lalith Kotelawala, said in a newspaper advertisement. Kotelawala said Khavan M Perera, chief executive director of Gold Key Credit Card Company Ltd has “admitted mismanagement and voluntarily […]

Dec 22, 2008 (LBO) – RAM Ratings has assigned a claims-paying ability rating of BB to Sri Lanka’s Co-operative Insurance Company Limited (CICL) with a stable outlook. It said in a statement the rating takes into account the company’s “moderate competitive position” and underwriting standards. “However, the rating is pressured by hefty overheads, inadequate reserving […]

Dec 21, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Edirisinghe Trust Investments (ETI), a registered finance company, has been upgraded by one notch to ‘BB-(lka)’ Fitch Ratings said, while its outlook has been lowered to ‘stable’ from ‘positive’ at the new credit level. Real estate, in the form of housing development projects and land, marketed to the […]

Dec 18, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s listed NDB Bank is taking control of Capital Markets Services Ltd, a licensed merchant bank in Bangladesh, the bank said. The investment was subject to unspecified conditions, NDB said. The bank had received approval from Sri Lanka’s central bank and finance ministry. NDB said in a stock exchange […]

PALM BEACH, December 16, 2008 (AFP) – The crime scene, according to prosecutors, is the 17th floor of a stately New York office building, where Bernard Madoff may have engineered the most costly investment swindle in history.But nowhere was the deception felt more personally than in Palm Beach, Florida, the small and affluent island community […]

MADRID, December 15, 2008 (AFP) – European banks were counting at the weekend the damage from the investment scandal involving New York trader Bernard Madoff, with Spain’s largest bank Santander saying a subsidiary may have lost more than three billion dollars.Madoff is alleged to have lost 50 billion dollars of investors’ money in a giant […]

Dec 13, 2008 (LBO) – With recessionary fears looming the need to secure one’s financial future has become even more important, though recent double digit inflation is eating almost all the disposable income of most average Sri Lankan, says a top analyst. You will have to go about setting a plan to achieve that objective. […]

Dec 10, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s public listed Commercial Bank of Ceylon says it has sought legal advice over a derivative deal with state-run People’s Bank which was sold to a state petroleum distributor. Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court has halted payments to banks which provided a complex derivative to state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation after […]

HONG KONG, December 8, 2008 (AFP) – Global banking giant HSBC has set up a 5 billion US dollar fund to help small and medium sized businesses get access to credit during the global financial crisis, the bank said.The fund represents money “over and above” what the London-based bank would normally lend in the current […]

Dec 08, 2008 (LBO) – The effects of a payment halt on derivatives by a state-run oil distributor is spreading far into Sri Lanka’s banking sector, hurting capital, interbank transaction integrity and international relationships, market participants say.Two weeks ago, CPC chairman Ashantha de Mel said outstanding exposures of Citibank to CPC were 400,000 barrels, Standard […]

Dec 05, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Commercial Bank says its liability to a counterparty under an exotic derivative deal arranged for state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) is 982 million rupees, after payments were suspended by court. Commercial Bank of Ceylon said the contract, based on WTI crude would expire on June 30, 2009 and […]

Dec 05, 2008 (LBO) – Fitch Ratings Lanka has confirmed Sri Lanka’s Vallibel Finance Ltd’s (VFL) national long-term rating at ‘B+’ with a stable outlook. The rating agency said Vallibel Finance’s profit margins had recovered after narrowing last year but noted that its bad loans had increased although its lending had shifted from three-wheelers to […]