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Weekly Lists
September 1, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 23
bne:Banker Czech parliament
shelves bill giving central bank stronger powers to control mortgages
Zaman-Bank established as Kazakhstan's second Islamic bank
The Czech parliament has shelved a bill sought by the Czech Na- tional Bank (CNB) that would have given the regulator stronger powers to damp down the current boom in mortgage lending.
The central bank had proposed a bill that would give it the power to cap loans according to debt-to-income, debt servicing-to-in- come, and loan-to-value ratios. The bill will now only be revisited after October’s general election.
The CNB is concerned about the growth in mortgage lending and the rise in property prices, which have reached a level it now be- lieves is overvalued. Residential real estates have grown by around 15% in the past year.
Kazakhstan’s Zaman-Bank has officially established itself as an Is- lamic bank after receiving an Islamic banking licence from the Na- tional Bank of Kazakhstan, the Astana Times reported on August 28.
Established in 1991 as a commercial bank, Zaman-Bank originally planned to turn into Islamic Banking back in 2014, but a lack of regulations on converting regular commercial banks to Islamic banks stalled the process.
Prior to Zaman-Bank’s transformation, Al Hilal Bank, created in 2010 as part of an intergovernmental agreement between Kazakh- stan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), stood as the country’s only Islamic bank.
An Islamic bank is required to conform to both principles of Islamic law and the central bank’s regulations.
Russian lender Promsvyazbank (PSB) issued a $500mn worth of perpetual bonds, the bank said on August 28. The perpetual bonds were placed at 8.75% yield.
Perpetual bonds have been popular in Russia's banking sector lately. Since the beginning of 2017, Tinkoff and Credit Bank of Moscow (MKB) placed $300mn and $700mn worth of perpetual bonds, respectively.
PSB was mentioned alongside Otkritie, Binbank and MKB as lender potentially facing problems in a controversial note from an Alfabank analyst earlier in August, which was later played down as the ana- lyst's "personal viewpoint”.
Promsvyazbank issues $500mn perpetual bonds