Other banks including Al-Mashreq Bank and First Abu Dhabi Bank had expressed their interest in overseeing the deal between Telecom Egypt and Vodafone Egypt. If the deal comes through, Telecom Egypt will restructure its mobile operator unit and merge it with Vodafone Egypt. 

Last week, Vodafone in a statement said, “Despite the expiration of the MoU that was previously signed between the two parties, Vodafone International is still in the stage of negotiations and discussions with STC to complete the deal in the near future.”

It is reported that STC and Vodafone Egypt will find a mutually beneficial agreement to complete the deal. STC had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Vodafone last week regarding the acquisition of Vodafone Egypt. The agreement points to an acquisition of 55 percent stake in Vodafone Egypt. However, it was reported that the agreement was not reached as expected due to differences between both parties. 

Under the terms of the deal, the purchase amount of $2.4 billion equals a full valuation of Vodafone Egypt at $4.3 million, media reports said.

The post EFG Hermes, Citibank to carry out Vodafone Egypt acquisition appeared first on International Finance.

Recently, Citibank also launched a new flagship wealth management center in a prime location in Singapore. Spanning over 30,000 square feet, the wealth management center will occupy four floors including two floors for 400 relationship managers and specialists as well as two floors for client meetings and events.

Reportedly, Citibank also plans to develop another wealth management center in Singapore as a part of its plan to double its wealth management business in the country.

Citibank’s chief executive Brendan Carney told the media, “We think there’s another gear that we can shift into and go from double-digit growth to really strong double-digit growth.”

He further revealed that the bank’s assets grew by 11 percent last year and its wealth management business recorded around 19 percent growth in assets.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic which has affected businesses all across the globe, Citibank expects its client base and assets at its retail unit in Southeast Asian markets to grow by 10 percent respectively.

Fabio Fontainha, Citibank’s head of retail banking for the Asia-Pacific said that the bank plans to expand its customer base across 12 markets, underpinned by online growth. She added that Citibank gets about a third of new clients online and that trend is expected to grow.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the wealth management sector in Asia is expected to grow to $29.6 trillion in the next nine years.

The post Citibank to double wealth management market share in Singapore by 2025 appeared first on International Finance.

TeleTrade

July 21, 2015: Every day, thousands of trades are conducted between traders around the world, but – let’s face it – most of them will never be remembered. The trades that stay in history have to be truly epic. A really incredible trade occurs when a brilliant person uses all their intelligence, intuition and creativity to find just the right moment to strike, sometimes against all odds, against all logic. Fortunes are made during crashes, collapses and crises or just by being the first to foresee a truly spectacular opportunity.

TeleTrade has compiled a list of trades throughout history that have all these qualities to be considered as the greatest trades of all time.

Join us to get inspired.

#1 Jesse Livermore’s shorting the Great Crash of 1929

Jesse Livermore is a legendary speculator, famous for correctly predicting the 1907 and 1929 stock market crashes. The Great Crash of 1929, which signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression, was the 20^th century’s most important economic event. After predicting the end of a period when US assets were booming in value, Livermore decided to short almost the entire stock market. That trade bagged him about $100 million, which is equivalent to over $1.4 billion today. He is considered an innovator in the art of speculation and world’s top traders swear by the ‘Reminiscences of a Stock Operator’, a book based on his trading philosophy and career.

#2 Paul Tudor Jones’ call on the Black Monday in 1987

Through the use of technical analysis and historical S&P data, Paul Tudor Jones predicted that the stock market was going to crash in 1987 and proceeded to massively short stocks. His analysis was based on the facts that stocks had returned over 40% in seven months and were overextended, international stock markets were falling and portfolio insurance was gaining momentum. These factors sent the stock market into a selling frenzy, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging 22% – the largest single-day decline ever, and Jones tripling his money, with a $100 million profit.  Shortly after, PBS released a documentary about Paul Tudor Jones, titled ‘Trader’.

#3 George Soros’ bet against the sterling

George Soros remained in history as ‘the man who broke the Bank of England’, as he placed an iconic short trade in 1992 that made him a Wall Street legend. Soros believed that interest rates in the UK were too low and inflation was too high. He, also, felt that it was a mistake for the UK to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism – a body aimed to unify EU economies –, as it would injure the sterling in the long run. So, he shorted a staggering $10 billion worth of British pounds. The enormous selling pressure pummeled the sterling, forcing the UK to leave ERM and forming a new currency regime for the country. Soros made $1 billion from that trade, which was an inconceivable amount back then.

#4 John Paulson’s deal against subprime mortgages

Few people predicted the real estate bubble burst in 2007, and even fewer got the timing just right. John Paulson was one of them. Banks were giving loans to individuals who could not afford to repay them, and these defective mortgages were backed by worthless derivative contracts, named credit default obligations (CDOs). Paulson saw the fragility of the situation and bet heavily against them. What he did was persuade banks to issue credit default swaps (CDSs) that shorted CDOs, and then proceeded to buy as many as possible. Then, he just waited for the market to collapse and cashed in. Paulson’s hedge fund netted around $4 billion on the bet, rendering it the top performing fund during one of the most severe crises in the US history.

#5 Jim Chanos shorting Enron

Jim Chanos is considered as one of the top short-sellers in the world. After thorough research, he correctly predicted the demise of Enron and made a killing out of it. Chanos began to dig into Enron as early as 2000. When he spotted red flags in the company’s accounting practices, he looked into the company deeper, revealed more discrepancies, informed the media, planned his short position and ultimately got rich, when the Enron scandal was exposed in October 2001. The Enron scandal had an enormous impact, as it was the biggest bankruptcy so far, which also resulted in the dissolution of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm (among the ‘Big Five’ at the time) and the introduction of new regulations.

#6 Jim Rogers’ early call on commodities

Back in the 1990s, commodities were in a long bear market. Jim Rogers saw the advent of a bull market from far away and made a bet that it will remain strong for a decade and more. So, he created the Rogers International Commodity Index in 1996 and put his effort into making it investable. From 1998 till the end of 2010, that index had consistently returned 209%, compared to the S&P 500 that returned 10%, during the same period. Rogers still argues that the commodities market will remain bullish, as paper assets become worthless and demand for certain commodities become stronger. If this turns out to be correct, the significance of his call will be tremendous.

#7 John Templeton shorting the dot-com bubble

Legendary investor Sir John Templeton was a veteran in making short trades. He made his best and biggest trade ever eight years before his death in 2000. Right before the dot-com bubble burst, he shorted a basket of internet stocks, describing it as the easiest money he ever made. What he did was sell all his stocks just before the post-IPO six-month lock-up expiry, when a bunch of newly created tech millionaires sought to cash out. That move made him $80 million in a few weeks. Another bet that Templeton is famous for is putting $100 each in 104 NYSE stocks that were trading under $1 in 1939. In four years, his portfolio quadrupled and made profit on 100 out of the 104.

#8 Andrew Hall’s prediction on oil

In 2003, when the price of oil was trading at $30 per barrel and the world had just recovered from the dot-com bubble, Andrew Hall bet that oil would climb to $100 within five years. When the price of oil skyrocketed above $100 million in 2008, Citigroup – which was Hall’s employer – made a fortune and Hall bagged $100 million. Hall prepared the contracts in a way that if the price of oil did not reach $100 within five years, they would expire with no value. Thus, it took guts and a brilliant analysis from Hall to conduct that trade. The importance of his bet lies on the fact that not only did he foresee the direction of the price and spotted a good entry point, but he also determined the time frame and the move’s price level.

#9 David Tepper’s long call on major banks

In early 2009, after the financial crisis showed its face and everyone thought the financial system was falling apart, David Tepper – an expert in distressed assets – made one of the best trades of the recession. With impeccable timing and detailed analysis, he bought huge quantities of the severely depressed stocks of Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC). At the time, there was a lot of concern that these banks would be nationalised. A few months later, at the end of the year, Citigroup tripled and Bank of America quadrupled in value from their earlier lows, earning Tepper’s hedge fund a $7 billion profit.

#10 Louis Bacon’s prescient bet on the Iraq war

Louis Bacon is famous for beating the CIA, the US president and other top government officials in predicting that Saddam Hussein would invade Kuwait back in the 1990s. So, he went long on oil and short on stocks and gained his hedge fund a return of 86%, as global oil supply froze, oil spiked and stocks plunged. Bacon, also, predicted that the US would quickly defeat Iraq and that the oil market would recover. His accurate predictions on market events around the Iraq war earned him numerous investors from all over the world and his hedge fund a 35% annual return for 13 consecutive years.

The post Top 10 most epic trades of all time appeared first on International Finance.

Kamilia Lahrichi

April 14, 2015: The Argentine left-wing government is suing in local courts Citibank Argentina, the country’s 12^th largest bank by deposits and a subsidiary of Citigroup, for exiting its bond custody business, Economy Minister Axel Kicillof said on April 8, 2015, in the latest development in the South American nation’s debt saga.

Last month, Citibank decided to make two bond payments to pay out Argentina’s creditors and shut down its custody business in the country.

The Argentine government stopped the bank from conducting capital market operations in the country after Citibank, the New York-based parent company, inked a deal on March 20, 2015 with NML, a group of hedge funds that have taken legal action against Argentina since its $100 billion default in 2001.

It was the second time the country defaulted in 13 years.

NML, led by American hedge fund manager Paul Singer, did so because Argentina has paid only some creditors and not all of them.

New York District Judge Thomas Griesa – who presided over the Argentine debt restructuring after its 2001 default – ruled that the litigious nation could not pay its restructured debt without reimbursing holdout creditors.

Argentina’s securities regulator also said on March 27, 2015 that a local financial firm would assume Citibank’s responsibility as custodian of some bonds. Citibank Argentina was a custodian agent that channeled payments in Argentina’s restructured bonds when the country restructured its debt.

Citibank “signed a deal with the devil on March 20, with the vulture hedge funds, to abandon Argentina,” said Mr. Kicillof in a press conference in Buenos Aires.

The administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has coined the hedge funds “vulture funds” as they bought the country’s debt at a very cheap price and are now expecting to make exorbitant profits. The deal “violated and interfered with regulations governing our public debt,” said the minister.

In addition, Mr. Kicillof asked the federal court to rule the deal unconstitutional and immediately suspend it “and any legal act which emanates or has emanated from it.”

A long-running feud

As relations between the country and the bank are heating up, the Argentine central bank stripped authority from Citibank Argentina’s head, Gabriel Ribisich, on April 1, 2015. Regulators argued that he disregarded local laws by complying with orders from a US court.

Four Argentine central bank regulators then entered Citibank Argentina’s headquarter in the capital to make sure that the bank was operating as usual.

In response to Argentina’s actions, Citibank said in an official communiqué that it had informed the National Securities Commission and asked Judge Griesa’s special permission not to be trapped in its custody business, ahead of the judge’s verdict.

In March 2015, Judge Griesa prevented the bank from processing $2.3 billion interest payments by Argentina on some bonds issued under the country’s law to avoid favouring some bondholders. This thus has kept the South American nation out of global financial markets.

Mr. Kicillof said this ruling was “a shameful excess of jurisdiction”.

“If the bank does not transfer the funds, it will be breaking Argentine banking law. The [Argentine] Republic could revoke Citibank Argentina’s license to operate and even impose criminal responsibility upon its employees,” he said in a statement.

Citibank responded in a communiqué to stress that “even though Citibank Argentina regretted not to be able to continue to provide its custody services, the decision was taken voluntarily based on the legal and jurisdictional conflicts that arose from the March 12 decision of the District Court […] and as a result of the desire of Citi to comply at all times with all applicable legislation.”

The bank also stated “that at all times it has acted in accordance with the law in force and that it will continue to collaborate with the regulatory authority, as it has done consistently throughout more than 100 years.” Citibank Argentina opened offices in 1914.

A legal imbroglio

“Citibank Argentine is at a crossroads,” said an Argentine lawyer specialising in financial and capital markets law in Buenos Aires. He declined to be identified and use his law firm’s name due to the sensitivity of the topic and his company’s indirect involvement with the Argentine government.

“The problem of Citibank Argentina lies in the fact that, on the one hand, it is bound to the obligations of its parent company [Citibank] and Griesa’s judgment […] and, on the other hand, it is obliged to comply with Argentine laws, among which is law N°26.984 on Argentina’s Sovereign Payment Law.”

Argentina’s commercial law sets out that there is no legal difference between Citibank’s branch in Argentina and its New York-based parent company.

In other words, Citibank’s branch in Argentina has to comply with the March 20, 2015 deal reached between the bank and NML as both are the same legal entity, said the lawyer.

Yet, “in accordance to the law N° 26.984 […], any act meant to affect or hinder the collection of the debt securities issued as part of Argentina’s debt restructuring in 2005 and 2010, could be considered a violation of the national public order,” he explained.

Another key legal hurdle is whether a foreign court order – namely Judge Griesa’s ruling – can be enforced on Argentine soil.

Article 517 of Argentina’s Civil and Commercial Procedure Code stipulates that a foreign judgment ought not to impede the principles of public order in Argentine law, thereby complicating the matter.

The impact

Despite being an important part of Argentina’s financial landscape – Citibank operates 74 branches in the country – “I do not see a decisive impact in the short term,” said Walter Morales, President of Wise Management, an economic and financial consulting firm in Buenos Aires.

“It is not a complete suspension of activities, but the task of being paying agent; and second because in the minds of investors, […] we are facing the last eight months of Kirchner’s government,” he explains.

There is hope among foreign investors and the opposition that the October 2015 general election in Argentina will bring to power a more market-oriented president keen to solve the debt crisis.

“Now if the ruling party wins elections and economic policy is not changed, the effect will be very negative [with a] direct impact on the levels of direct investment,” added Mr. Morales.

Also Read:

Debt saga: An unhappy New Year for Argentina

Thousands of Argentines take to the streets

Don’t expect cheap birthday presents if you live in Argentina

The post Argentina sues and suspends Citibank appeared first on International Finance.

August 27, 2014: NDB Investment Bank (NDBIB) has implemented innovative debt and equity tactics in local capital markets for over a decade. The company was established in 1997 as Citi National Investment Bank, a joint venture between National Development Bank (NDB) and Citibank N.A.

NDB acquired Citibank’s shareholding in 2009, thereby taking NDBIB under its wing as a fully owned subsidiary and positioning the company to drive the investment banking operations of NDB Group. Over the years, NDBIB has harnessed the local expertise of NDB to emerge as the market leader for both debt and equity structuring and placement, and advisory services.

NDBIB provides its clients with advisory services in the areas of debt and equity structuring and distribution, corporate restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, equity placements, privatisation and infrastructure development.

It thrives on its ability to furnish its clients with optimum prices and placement of issues with local and foreign investors on equitable grounds. The company has directed and managed several successful public offerings, including the largest ever equity issue on the Colombo bourse. It continues its strategy to provide value addition through innovative products and services. The success of its efforts is evidenced by the fact that NDBIB serves as a trusted advisor and secures repeat mandates from many of the blue chip companies listed on the CSE.

The company maintains an excellent working relationship with regulatory authorities such as the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) and the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2011, NDBIB also strengthened its international reach through a strategic alliance with DBS Bank, Singapore, one of Asia’s largest banks.

Undisputed market leadership

NDBIB is the market leader on both debt and equity capital markets in Sri Lanka. The company enjoys over 50 percent market share in all verticals of service offerings. It dominates the equity capital markets space in terms of funds raised, having managed three of the four largest IPOs on the CSE to date, the top three IPOs on the CSE in terms of the quantum of funds subscribed and the top two IPOs in terms of oversubscription level.

The company has extended its leadership in the debt capital markets space in Sri Lanka by meeting its clients’ funding requirements via securitisation of lease and hire purchase receivables, tea auction sales for plantation companies and credit and debit card receivables, commercial papers, debentures and syndicated loans. The corporate advisory team at NDBIB is the industry-leading financial advisory unit in Sri Lanka for mergers and acquisition, restructuring transactions, valuations and diagnostic studies.

NDBIB pioneered the introduction of a number of financial products and services to the Sri Lankan financial market, and was the first to initiate the book-building process for pricing initial public offerings in Sri Lanka via the Lanka IOC IPO in 2004 and also introduced the tender process at an equity private placement in 2010.

The company has secured a distinctive name for the introduction of cross border swaps and securitisations bespoke for clients in diverse industries, namely utilities, plantation, retail and finance sectors. A case in point is the recent introduction of a securitisation of future debit and credit card receivables, which was widely accepted by organisations in the retail space. NDBIB has also instigated many interest rate swaps to some of the largest institutional investors in Sri Lanka.

Structured teamwork drives standards

The team brings together a depth of experience and multi-disciplinary knowledge, combined with the shared drive to deliver financial solutions that are structurally superior. The disciplines of finance, accounting, economics, engineering, statistics, mathematics and marketing are well represented by the team members who offer a unique combination of both local and foreign expertise.  The corporate culture at NDBIB is driven on the highest ethical standards with honesty and integrity as its hallmarks. It adheres to strict corporate, governance and ethical guidelines, including CFA’s code of conduct – an internal framework for compliance and industry best practices.

NDBIB has set its sights on further strengthening its global reach by seeking strategic alliances with foreign distribution channels in order to meet the growing thirst for capital in Sri Lanka. Leveraging on the solid foundation set in 2013 and collaboration with the NDB Group network, NDBIB looks forward to a successful year ahead.

The post NDBIB dominates investment banking space in Sri Lanka appeared first on International Finance.