Barclays fined for transaction inaccuracies

AFP, London

Barclays bank has been fined 2.45 million pounds for "serious weaknesses" in systems and controls that led to inaccurate reporting of transactions, Britain's financial watchdog said on Tuesday.

The Financial Services Authority said It had fined Barclays the equivalent of 2.8 million euros or 4.1 million dollars "for failing to provide accurate transaction reports to the FSA and for serious weaknesses in systems and controls in relation to transaction reporting."

FSA director of markets, Alexander Justham, said in a statement the penalty was "significantly higher than previous penalties imposed for transaction reporting errors."

He added:"This reflects the serious nature of Barclays breaches and is a warning to oilier firms that the FSA will not tolerate inadequate systems and controls."

The FSA said firms were required to submit transactions data by the close of business the day after a trade was executed.

"The FSA uses this data to detect and investigate suspected market abuse: insider trading and market manipulation," said the watchdog.

"The FSA discovered discrepancies in Barclays' data while reviewing a suspected incident of market abuse by a third party.

Egypt threatens mobile phone operators on Ramadan specials

AFP, Cairo

Egypt is threatening to punish mobile phone operators with a freeze on new customer lines if they keep prices lower after the holy month of Ramadan, newspapers reported on Tuesday.

Main operators Mobinil and Vodafone Egypt have offered customers phone calls as cheap as five piastres (one cent) a minute during Ramadan, which ends by September 20.

Vodafone and Etisalat Egypt have also slashed roaming fees to about nine cents a minute for subscribers receiving calls from Egypt while on pilgrimage to Islam's holiest places in Saudi Arabia.

Communications and Information Technology Minister Tareq Kamel said the offers were harming other companies, apparently referring to the government's landline operator Telecom Egypt, independent daily Al-Masry Al-Yom reported.

State-news agency MENA reported that Kamel had agreed in a meeting with the companies' representatives to allow them to continue their offers until Ramadan ends.

Japan's current account surplus narrows in July

AFP, Tokyo

Japan's current account surplus shrank at a faster than expected pace in July, hit by weak exports and falling returns from overseas investments, official data showed Tuesday.

The surplus in the current account -- the broadest measure of trade with the rest of the world — fell 19.4 percent in July from ayear earlier to 1.266 trillion yen (13.5 billion dollars), the finance ministry said.

The decline followed the first year-on-year rise in the surplus in 16 months in June as the world's number two economy slowly emerges from its worst recession in decades, helped by stimulus spending by world governments.

The July surplus in the income account fell 24.2 percent to 1.25 trillion yen, reflecting lower returns on overseas investments held by Japanese companies and individuals, partly because of super-low global interest rates.

The services account deficit also widened due to lower patent payments from overseas, offsetting the positive impact of a 42.3 percent increase in the trade surplus from a year earlier to 437.3 billion yen.

Finland sinks into eurozone's deepest recession in Q2

AFP, Helsinki

Finland has sunk into the deepest recession in the eurozone after official data published Tuesday showed that its economy shrank 9.4 percent on a 12-month basis in the second quarter of this year.

The drop is die biggest annual decline since the fourth quarter of 1991 when the Nordic country's economy shrank by 8.0 percent.

The latest figures were far worse than analyst expectations.

Economists quoted by the Kauppalehti business daily predicted negative growth of 7.3 percent year-on-year.

Statistics Finland, the official data agency, said the economy shrank by 2.6 in the second quarter, compared to a revised figure of minus 3.0 in the first.

Elsewhere in the European Union, only the economies of Estonia, I-atvia and Lithuania reported larger negative growth figures in the second quarter. Ireland, however, is yet to release its GDP data for the period from April to June.