There are growing indications that the Iranian banking system is in crisis, weighed down by a proliferation of non-performing loans. Although there is no timely financial reporting to speak of in Iran, a number of recent news stories suggest to me that the country’s banks are in a great deal of trouble.

Central Bank of [Read more...]

There are two key aspects to President Obama’s banking reform:

1) It attempts to address the ‘too big to fail’ debate: Obama wants to place size limits on banks (although it is still unclear what these are). This should create a wave of divestments and carve-outs in the banking industry.

2) To break up [Read more...]

With the international investment community shaken by suggestions of a potential Dubai World default, this week we turn our attention to the troubled Kazakh banking sector. Bruce Jeffery, Business Monitor’s Kazakhstan analyst, provides some insight into the industry and shares his views on the key themes, which will likely dominate next year.

 

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Cautious appears to be the best way to describe sentiment among Mexico City’s executives and bureaucrats at present, or at least that was the feeling Risk Watchdog came away with after spending a week on the ground there. This is not surprising, given the severity of the blow to Mexico’s economy from the recent downturn. [Read more...]

As the Latvian government proposes a bill to change mortgage regulation to ease the debt burden on households, Bruce Jeffery argues that the country may be one step closer to eventual devaluation of the currency peg.

 

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Surprise, surprise, there is (yet again) trouble brewing in Nigeria. Nope, this time the spotlight is not on the Niger Delta rebels, but on something potentially far more deadly: the country’s banking sector. Sounds familiar? Indeed, as attentive Risk Watchdog readers might remember, way back in January I mentioned how opaque reporting standards and large [Read more...]

‘Islamic banks have withstood the recent turmoil in the global banking industry triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis because their rules do not allow dealings in products like derivatives, options or papers that caused the meltdown.’

At least that’s what I keep reading in the media. And it’s a fair point. If the credit crunch was [Read more...]