Keywords: Commercial Bank Of Qatar, Alternatifbank, FSS South Korea, KEB, PBoC, SBV, RBI, Visa, RBA

"Cypriot banks have for years been taking the kinds of risks that are not allowed in France."
Bank of France governor Christian Noyer, on the EU taking a hardline for conditions to provide Cyprus with bailout funds.


The following are notes from our Monday morning meeting.

M&A deals involving Asia Pacific companies, excluding Japan, totalled $79.5b in Q1 2013, down 26.6% from Q1 2012, says a Thomson Reuters report.

The US National Association of Realtors said existing home sales increased 0.8% to an annual of 4.98m units last month, the highest since November 2009.

Credit card transaction value in South Africa increased by 22.7% to $2.2b at the end of 2012.

Commercial Bank of Qatar will acquire Turkey’s Alternatifbank for $460m.

FSS South Korea raided Korea Exchange Bank after the bank was accused of overcharging SMEs by allegedly rigging interest rates on loans.

China’s PBoC governor Zhou Xiaochuan said one-fifth of loans to local governments are risky, with net debt issuance up 179% in 2012 to $182b.

Vietnam will establish a debt management company managed by SBV to take over bad loans from banks.

Overall loans growth in Malaysia decelerated in 2012 but remained at 10.4% compared with 13.6% in 2011. Read The Asian Banker Databook. 

India’s RBI will implement a new real-time risk-based supervision system in the country’s 30 largest banks from April 1.

Visa restricted Australian retailers from charging customers excessive fees, down to as little as 1%, following an RBA review.