A bank is a business that borrows from its customers on current accounts repayable to its customer's cheques and collects cheques for its customers' accounts. Banks may also issue bank notes, and lend money to customers on currenct account(called overdraft), accept term deposits and make term loans and provide other financial services. Banks that issue notes are called Banks of Issue.

Currently in most jurisdictions the business of banking is regulated and banks require a licence. Banking licenses are granted by bank regulatory authorities and provide rights to conduct the most fundamental banking services such as accepting deposits and making loans. There are also financial institutions that provide certain banking services without meeting the legal definition of a bank, a so called non-banking financial company.

Banks have a long history, and have influenced economies and politics for centuries.

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The Economist: Banking

American banks:
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:35:37 -0000
Commercial banks prepare, reluctantly, to take centre stageEVERY episode in the credit crunch has had its dramatic flourish. There were the defenestrations at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch late last year; then, in March, the Bear Stearns fiasco; the humbling of UBS; and now Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a tale of hubris that might impress Shakespeare himself. What next? With the tragedy of the mortgage giants still unfolding, another dark drama is entering its second act, and it has rather a lot of players. It concerns America’s commercial banks. “Pretty dismal” was the frank description of their recent performance offered on August 26th by Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). That was just after announcing a rise in the number of banks on its danger list, from 90 to 117. ...
Private equity and banks:
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:35:37 -0000
Will private equity ride to banks’ rescue?IN MOST financial crises private equity is part of the problem. During a typical credit cycle it is among the first to use cheap financing to buy companies. Buy-out firms gradually become trigger-happy, overpaying and loading businesses with so much debt that some of them go bust. After the crash, the industry is in disgrace and skulks away to bind its wounds. Years later it returns, penitent, wiser—but hungry once again for cheap loans.In this financial crisis, however, private equity thinks it is part of the solution. Buy-out firms have struck lots of dodgy deals, certainly, but they are still rich and ambitious. And amid the financial wreckage of the credit collapse, private-equity partners think they have spotted a chance to make a lot of money by helping Western banks to repair their tattered balance sheets. ...
Nigeria:
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:47:15 -0000
Doubts persist about Nigeria’s banksTHE bright logos of Nigeria’s financial institutions adorn the tallest and poshest office blocks in central Lagos, the country’s commercial capital, testimony to years of impressive growth in banking. But now, after a rocky year, there are worries that some of the optimism may have been overblown. The reform of Nigeria’s creaking, corrupt banking system was one of the big achievements of President Olusegun Obasanjo in his second term in office (2003-07). As part of a policy to squeeze weak or failing banks out of business, in 2005 the Central Bank of Nigeria raised banks’ capital requirements. In a hectic round of consolidation, the number of banks dropped from 89 to 24. Those that remained have had a very good few years, with massive local expansion and sometimes triple-digit growth in their share prices. And with less than a fifth of Nigerians keeping their money in banks and with fast growth led by private companies, there still seems to be plenty of potential for more business. Banks surveyed by a Lagos-based stockbroker, Afrinvest, showed that median before-tax earnings had risen by 141% year-on-year by June. ...
Auction-rate securities:
Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:49:44 -0000
Once again, banks are buckling under pressure from an attorney-general “LIKE a Moroccan bazaar” was how William Galvin, Massachusetts’s secretary of state, described the market for auction-rate securities (ARS), whose collapse has left thousands of investors stuck with debt they had assumed they could easily sell. But there is a difference. Getting a stallholder in Fez to take back damaged goods is a tall order. Banks, on the other hand, have moved quickly under pressure to buy back the paper they flogged, in what looks like the biggest-ever forced bail-out of Main Street by Wall Street.In normal markets, auction-rate debt looked highly seductive. With the interest rate reset weekly or monthly in auctions, cities, student-loan trusts and the like could issue long-term debt while benefiting from lower short-term rates. Buyers got a near-cash product that paid higher yields than money-market funds. Brokers typically creamed off up to 0.25% of a market that swelled to $330 billion by last summer. When demand began to subside late last year, dealers bought the debt themselves to prevent auctions from failing. But most pulled out in February as the failures became endemic. New York’s Andrew Cuomo and other attorneys-general took up the cudgel—in an echo of Eliot Spitzer’s post-dotcom crusade. UBS, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch have agreed to buy back more than a combined $41 billion of ARS and pay at least $250m in fines. JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley were reportedly close to a settlement on August 13th. ...
Bank strategies:
Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:49:44 -0000
Don’t blame banks’ business models for the credit crisis. Blame their managementFROM “you and us” to “us and them”. UBS, a dishevelled Swiss bank, announced on August 12th that it was stepping away from its integrated model and establishing its investment-banking, wealth-management and asset-management divisions as stand-alone entities. UBS’s management scoffs at the idea that this will lead to the sale of the investment bank, but a break-up is precisely what many inside and outside the bank think is needed. The problem, they say, is that big banks like UBS and America’s Citigroup have got the wrong model. It is true that risk-loving investment bankers and stability-prizing private bankers make unlikely bedfellows. The recklessness of UBS’s investment bankers has made the bank the credit crunch’s biggest total loss-maker to date. Clients of its private bank are spooked: the wealth-management arm suffered an overall loss of deposits in the second quarter. Swiss regulators are also unnerved and want a more robust capital regime for the country’s big banks. ...
Northern Rock:
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:59:56 -0000
The mortgage lender’s cash call is an ominous sign for all British banksSTUDENTS of politics (and more than a few politicians) know only too well the old dictum about lies that are repeated often enough becoming truth. Those foolish enough to believe it should take a look at the sorry tale of Northern Rock, a troubled mortgage lender that failed last September when it ran out of cash. For almost a year afterwards Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, repeated, mantra-like, that this was a sound bank brought low by events from afar, and that taxpayers would get back every one of the billions of pounds they lent it. On August 5th Mr Darling was mugged by reality when Northern Rock came to him, cap in hand, again. This time the bank wanted help in shoring up its balance-sheet, which is crumbling thanks to a mortgage book that looks worse by the day. The government, which is still owed some GBP21 billion ($41 billion) by the hapless bank, has agreed to convert as much as GBP3 billion of the debt (as well as some GBP400m in preference shares) into ordinary shares. This urgent need for capital should make those who still think taxpayers will get all their money back think twice. So should those who dare to hope that Britain’s banks have seen the worst of the credit crisis. ...

World Bank/IMF

EU: Court hits at Brussels secrecy
The European Union's secretive decision-making processes were condemned on Thursday in a legal judgment that should lead to more light being shed on how thousands of regulations affecting businesses are hatched.
CONGO: World Bank accused of razing Congo forests
The World Bank encouraged foreign companies to destructively log the world's second largest forest, endangering the lives of thousands of Congolese Pygmies, according to a report on an internal investigation by senior bank staff and outside experts.
Digging for Dirt in the DRC?
As the Congolese government begins a review of mining contracts, a mining kingpin is deported on unrelated corruption charges, and the World Bank faces accusations of failure to provide oversight of contract deals.

ING Latest Press Releases

18/08/08 - ING DIRECT closes Interhyp takeover bid with approx. 90% of shares tendered
Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

13/08/08 - Second Quarter 2008 Results
Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

30/07/08 - ING DIRECT announces approx. 90% of Interhyp shares tendered; public takeover bid extended
Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

22/07/08 - ING Closes Sale of Mexican Non-Core Insurance Business to AXA
Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

14/07/08 - ING DIRECT receives regulatory approval for public takeover bid for Germany's largest mortgage distributor Interhyp
Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

09/07/08 - ING receives approval to start life insurance in Ukraine
Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200


The Economist: The World Bank and the IMF

Poverty:
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:35:37 -0000
The world is poorer than we thought, the World Bank discoversIN APRIL 2007 the World Bank announced that 986m people worldwide suffered from extreme poverty—the first time its count had dropped below 1 billion. On August 26th it had grim news to report. According to two of its leading researchers, Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion, the “developing world is poorer than we thought”. The number of poor was almost 1.4 billion in 2005.This does not mean the plight of the poor had worsened—only that the plight is now better understood. The bank has improved its estimates of the cost of living around the world, thanks to a vast effort to compare the price of hundreds of products, from packaged rice to folding umbrellas, in 146 countries. In many poor countries the cost of living was steeper than previously thought, which meant more people fell short of the poverty line. ...
Who runs the world?:
Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:02:45 -0000
The post-war global institutions have largely worked well. But rising countries and growing threats are challenging their pre-eminence THE powerful, like the victorious, do not just write history. They grab the seats at the top tables, from the United Nations Security Council to the boards of the big international economic and financial institutions. They collude behind closed doors. They decide who can join their cosy clubs and expect the rest of the world to obey the instructions they hand down. That is how many outsiders, not just in the poor world, will see the summit that takes place from July 7th to 9th of the G8, the closest the world has to an informal (ie, self-appointed) steering group. Leaders of seven of the world’s richest democracies, plus oil-and gas-fired Russia, gather this year in Toyako, on Hokkaido in northern Japan, to ruminate on climate change, rising food and energy prices, and the best way to combat global scourges from disease to nuclear proliferation. ...
International government:
Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:02:45 -0000
Global institutions are an outdated muddle; the rise of Asia makes their reform a priority for the WestCLUBS are all too often full of people prattling on about things they no longer know about. On July 7th the leaders of the group that allegedly runs the world—the G7 democracies plus Russia—gather in Japan to review the world economy. But what is the point of their discussing the oil price without Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest producer? Or waffling about the dollar without China, which holds so many American Treasury bills? Or slapping sanctions on Robert Mugabe, with no African present? Or talking about global warming, AIDS or inflation without anybody from the emerging world? Cigar smoke and ignorance are in the air.The G8 is not the only global club that looks old and impotent (see article). The UN Security Council has told Iran to stop enriching uranium, without much effect. The nuclear non-proliferation regime is in tatters. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the fireman in previous financial crises, has been a bystander during the credit crunch. The World Trade Organisation’s Doha round is stuck. Of course, some bodies, such as the venerable Bank for International Settlements (see article), still do a fine job. But as global problems proliferate and information whips round the world ever faster, the organisational response looks ever shabbier, slower and feebler. The world’s governing bodies need to change. ...

ieg

New Joint World Bank-IMF-MIGA Evaluation: Environmental Sustainability: An Evaluation of World Bank Group Support
Bank Group support for the environment has grown during the past 15 years and performance has improved. At the same time, environmental challenges have increased, and problems in the critical areas of pollution, congestion, loss of species, and climate change have worsened. In view of the public goods nature of these concerns, the Bank Group has a special role to play with respect to environmental issues-and has indeed been a leader in the analysis and advocacy that helps countries focus on these challenges. It is also the largest multilateral source of environment-related financing. But far greater progress is needed. These concerns must be given increased operational priority, as should how the Bank, IFC, and MIGA work together, in recognition that long-term economic growth, poverty reduction, and environmental sustainability are interlinked. Visit the Website | Download the Report
New Project Performance Assessment Report (PPAR) on Colombia: Structural Fiscal Adjustment Project; First Programmatic Fiscal and Institutional Adjustment Loan Second Programmatic Fiscal and Institutional Structural Adjustment Loan; Third Programmatic Fiscal and Institutional Structural Adjustment Loan
Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:58:46 -0400
This PPAR of four loans extended to Colombia to help the government improve its fiscal performance and its institutional efficiency: the Structural Fiscal Adjustment Program (SFAL), and a series of three loans called the Programmatic Fiscal and Institutional Adjustment Loans, I to III (FIALS). Although the SFAL was an independent operation, it served as a steppingstone for the design of the more ambitious program that framed the FIAL series. For this reason, this report evaluates the outcomes of three processes: the SFAL, the FIALs and the fiscal operations as a whole.
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