Business

Failing to curb federal budget deficits would do "great damage" to the United States economy in the long run, US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Tuesday.

The World Bank-sponsored Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) is searching for a new supervisor of the three-year-old regional insurance fund, saying the first management contract has run its...

FirstCaribbean International Bank Limited (FCIB) has partnered with an American telecoms firm to offer banking services on the go to customers across the banking group's 17 regional markets.The service is free to customers, who FCIB said can now check...

Hertz Global Holdings Inc said Monday it has agreed to buy rival Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group for about US$1.17 billion in cash and stock as it tries to expand its vacationer business.

The United States Treasury Department said Monday that it plans to sell up to 1.5 billion shares of Citigroup stock, its latest move to unwind the support it provided big banks during the financial crisis.

The finance minister, Audley Shaw, has again called for the lowering of interest rates to single digits, to boost production within the Jamaican economy.

Regulatory focus has moved towards shifting the business model of the securities dealers away from a repurchase agreement (repo)-based intermediation model where the principal revenue source is net interest income, to one that is driven by more fee-based and trading activities.

National Commercial Bank of Jamaica's interest income from loans and securities tanked by a billion dollars in the three-month period ending March 2010, a reverse of the previous year's outcome.

In recent weeks, my friend and colleague, Sir Ronald Sanders, has written more than once about what he and others regard as the failure so far of Caribbean politicians to defend strenuously the economic interests of industries like rum, sugar and bananas in the face of European offers of trade liberalisation to Andean and Central American nations.

In 15 years, the Tax Incentive Programme (TIP) has benefited only 35 companies which, together, qualified for tax breaks amounting to $2.5 billion. Within that time, 65 companies applied to the programme, well below what its administrators, the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), had expected.

Investment banker Christopher Williams is again urging Jamaican companies to look to the capital market for financing for their businesses."For too long we have looked only to the banking sector for financing.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding announced plans on Tuesday to unify the gender eligibility age of NIS pensioners, a policy shift that effectively raises the retirement age for women in one-year increments up to 2015.