Tag: Region Americas

On March 17, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and Russian Children’s Ombudsman, Maria Lvova-Belova. They are accused of deporting children from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia, which, according to the court, constitutes a war crime.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the document “legally worthless.”

“Decisions of the International Criminal Court have no value for our country, in particular from a legal point of view,” Zakharova wrote in a Telegram post.

“Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and doesn’t bear obligations under it. Russia doesn’t cooperate with this body, and possible ‘recipes’ for arrest coming out of the International Court of Justice will be legally worthless and void for us.”

Deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and former Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, made a rather discourteous comment:

“No need to explain how this (piece) paper should be used,” Medvedev said, adding a toilet paper roll emoji to his Twitter post.

While Silicon Valley Bank was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation after its value collapsed following a bank run last Friday, the rest of SVB Financial Group will be sold off in an effort to repay creditors and large depositors, though it will not cover everyone who lost money in the collapse. A legal battle is expected to follow. Earlier this week, a shareholder lawsuit filed in the US district court for the Northern District of California alleged that several of SVB’s quarterly and annual financial reports had not fully disclosed the risks being communicated by the Federal Reserve that looming interests rate hikes “had the potential to cause irrevocable damage to the company.” 

While the FDIC only covers customer deposits under $250,000, the administration of President Joe Biden stepped in after SVB’s collapse to guarantee those exceeding that amount, rankling critics who see it as a bailout masquerading as a regulatory action. An inordinately large percentage – 94% – of SVB’s deposits exceeded the $250,000 cutoff, about twice the typical share at other banks. Senate Republicans pointed out that the banks that didn’t fail would be unfairly penalized when their own rates increased to cover the hefty payouts to depositors, costs which would ultimately be passed onto the taxpayer, putting them on the hook for a bailout after all. New York-based Signature Bank collapsed just days after SVB, triggering fears of a wider contagion even as the president attempted to reassure Americans that their finances were safe. Similar to SVB, 90% of its deposits exceeded the FDIC cap.

The International Criminal Court said Friday that it has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine.

It was the first time the global court has issued a warrant against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

The ICC said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of (children) and that of unlawful transfer of (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

It also issued a warrant for the arrest of Maria Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation.

The move was immediately dismissed by Moscow.

Eleven of the biggest banks in the U.S. agree to provide funds to shore up First Republic as shares plummet by as much as 70 per cent over the past week.

San Francisco-based First Republic is caught in the fallout from Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse last Friday. Its shares have plummeted as much as 70 per cent over the past week. Much like SVB, First Republic has not reported any sudden loan losses or writedowns. But clients nervous about its stability have been pulling deposits and transferring them to larger institutions, something known as a flight to quality.

With First Republic looking like the next domino to fall in a cascade of bank failures, the larger lenders and investment banks are hoping their deposits will keep it standing, and prevent the situation from spiralling out of control.

It is an unusual approach.

Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire known for his opposition to Beijing and ties to the administration of former US President Donald Trump, has been charged in the United States with defrauding investors out of $1bn.

Guo, also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Miles Guo, was arrested in New York on Wednesday over an alleged conspiracy involving the misappropriation of hundreds of millions of dollars obtained from his thousands of followers online, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.

Guo is accused of pocketing money raised from investors who were promised outsized returns for backing a number of his business ventures, including the media company GTV Media Group, an exclusive membership club known as G|CLUBS and a cryptocurrency called Himalaya Coin.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Shoigu told Austin that the incident was caused by the Americans violating the airspace restriction declared by Russia, with all the proper international notifications in place. Shoigu called US drone flights off the Russian coast “provocative in nature” and risked an escalation of tensions in the Black Sea. 

While Russia does not desire such a development, it will “continue to respond proportionately to all provocations,” Shoigu said. He added that the two nuclear powers “must act as responsibly as possible,” which includes keeping a military channel open to discuss any crisis.

Speaking at a Pentagon press briefing, Austin confirmed that he made the call, and said it was “important that great powers be models of transparency and communication.” However, he insisted the US would “continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows.”

Silicon Valley Bank’s parent company and two senior executives are facing a class-action lawsuit in the United States, where shareholders have accused the financial institution of failing to disclose the risks that anticipated interest rate hikes would have on its business.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Northern District of California on Monday, is seeking unspecified damages from SVB Financial Group and its Chief Financial Officer Daniel Beck, as well as the bank’s Chief Executive Officer Greg Becker.

The bank collapsed and its assets were seized by the US government late last week after a mass withdrawal of funds by customers.

The lawsuit, which accuses SVB of violating federal securities laws, noted that the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, had signaled as early as 2021 that it would increase interest rates to tame inflation.

Credit Suisse shares tumbled more than 20% in pre-market trading on Wednesday after its biggest backer ruled out investing any more into the troubled Swiss bank. 

“The answer is absolutely not, for many reasons outside the simplest reason, which is regulatory and statutory,” Saudi National Bank Chairman Ammar Al Khudairy said in a Bloomberg interview, responding to whether the Gulf lender would dole out more money. 

Shares in Credit Suisse slid 21.91% to $1.96 in pre-market trading in US-listed shares. Meanwhile, in Zurich, it’s stock fell 19% to $1.79, marking a new record low on Switzerland’s stock exchange. The bank’s stock is down about 24% since the start of the year.

US stocks tumbled Wednesday, as the banking sector saw renewed turmoil — but this time focused on Europe. US-listed shares of Credit Suisse plunged more than 20%, as Saudi backers ruled out further investment in the embattled lender.

Since regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank on Friday, investors have been concerned about another 2008-style financial crisis. On Tuesday, Moody’s cut its outlook for the entire US banking system. Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported wholesale prices posted a monthly decline of 0.1% in February, versus expectations for a 0.3% increase.

An American intelligence drone crashed after colliding with a Russian fighter over the Black Sea on Tuesday, the U.S. Air Force’s European headquarters said in a release.

The MQ-9 Reaper drone was flying a routine surveillance mission in international airspace when it crossed paths with two Su-27 fighters around 7 a.m. local time, according to U.S. Air Forces in Europe.

The Russian jets began antagonizing the unmanned aircraft, repeatedly dumping fuel on and buzzing in front of the much smaller Reaper, the Air Force said. One Su-27 drew close enough to hit the drone’s tail propeller, causing its remote operators to lose control of the plane.

March 14, 2023. Blick Online: Dark hours for Credit Suisse Bank Dark hours for the bank Credit Suisse, which continues to fight against the outflow of cash from its coffers. The trend has slowed but not reversed, the bank said in its annual report on Tuesday. The Zurich group suffered massive liquidity withdrawals last year, of 123.2 billion francs, including…

At the best of times this is not a good look for an institution in charge of £1.1 trillion worth of the world’s deposits and investments. In the middle of the worst jitters over bank safety for 15 years, it is doubly awkward. Coming weeks after both the chairman and chief executive had given the impression that the outflows had bottomed out, it is also deeply embarrassing. Markets gave their own unambiguous verdict. Credit default swaps on Credit Suisse debt hit a record, meaning it is more costly than ever for investors to insure against the group defaulting. The shares slumped by 4 per cent at one point yesterday, though they rallied on the back of a worldwide bounce in bank stocks.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) will not affect China’s financial system but offers an important lesson for the country’s banking industry, the official Securities Times has said.

An SVB-style bank failure is unlikely to happen in China but the incident would have “important implications for the development of China’s small- and medium-sized lenders, and the stability of China’s financial system”, the media outlet said in an editorial on Wednesday.

SVB’s shutdown on Friday has roiled global markets, forced US President Joe Biden to rush out assurances that the financial system is safe and prompted emergency US measures giving banks access to more funding.

Responding after Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said Ottawa is seeking “potential regime change in Russia” in comments to reporters last week, Moscow’s Ambassador to Canada Oleg Stepanov asked how Western nations would respond if the roles were reversed. “Quite perplexed to hear from Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly that her goal is ‘regime change’ in Russia. Is this how she instructs the Canadian Embassy in Moscow?” Stepanov said on Monday. “And by the way, what reaction would we expect if, for example, someone in Moscow had said that Russia’s goal is ‘regime change’ in Ottawa?”

A Southfield, Michigan-headquartered bank holding company has agreed to plead guilty to securities fraud for filing false securities statements relating to its 2017 initial public offering (IPO) and its 2018 and 2019 annual filings.

According to a signed plea agreement that will be publicly filed in court, Sterling Bancorp, Inc. (the Company) was the holding company for its wholly owned subsidiary, Sterling Bank and Trust F.S.B. (the Bank, or together with the Company, “Sterling”). Sterling – with branches located in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, and Southfield – completed an IPO in 2017, and the Company’s stock began trading on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker symbol “SBT.”

Antonov met with Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried, who protested the “unsafe and unprofessional intercept” of the drone that resulted in its loss. “We consider this incident a provocation,” Antonov told reporters after the meeting. He said he told Donfried that US drones, planes and ships had no business being that close to Russian…