Bad Debts
The World Bank acknowledges in an internal report that there has seen a dramatic rise in the number of projects gone sour. The number of bank-financed projects with "major problems" doubled over the last decade, reaching a high of one out of five, or 374 out of the 1,870 programs it backed in 1991. The World Bank has lent more than $300 billion to developing countries over the last half century.
Bureaucracy, overlapping programs and failure to try new ideas are keeping America and other wealthy countries from preventing starvation, former President Carter said Wednesday.At a World Bank conference on hunger, Carter took the bank and other institutions to task for holding conferences and then not making much progress in keeping people fed."In the Near East and Latin America the number of hungry people has been about the same.
Top White House national security aides are urging President Clinton to end U.S. opposition to IMF and World Bank aid for Vietnam as a possible prelude to lifting a decades-old trade embargo, U.S. officials said yesterday The proposal, if implemented, would mark a major step toward Vietnam by the United States, which has not had diplomatic relations with Hanoi in the 20 years since U.S. troops withdrew from the country.
Foreign banks, shippers, law firms and other tenants of the World Trade Center scrambled Sunday to set up shop elsewhere because Friday's blast has shut down the 110-story twin towers for at least a week.New York's commodity exchanges planned to reopen today, however, under a special exemption from safety officials. These are not in the towers, but in the nine-story 4 World Trade Center.
Top U.S. commercial bankers said Tuesday that the delinquent multibillion-dollar debts of foreign nations are only a "temporary liquidity" problem, which they expect utlimately will be paid.But officials of the Bank of America, Citibank and Chase Manhattan told the House Banking Committee that increased U.S. support for the International Monetary Fund is crucial to ending that Third World debt crisis.
Recent agreements by international lending and financial institutions: Organization of American States * An $800,000 study funded by the government of Nicaragua to study river basin development and a plan for investment projects. The study will be conducted jointly by the OAS Department of Regional Development and the Institute of Natural Resources in Nicaragua.
Bankers won a fierce battle this year when they succeeded in repealing a law that required banks and other corporations to withhold 10 percent of the interest and dividends paid on savings and investments.But when Congress, moved by an unprecedented flood of protest from U.S. citizens, did away with the 10 percent withholding, it also drafted banks and other financial institutions for the IRS' war against tax cheaters.
When a stock analyst at your bank recommends buying the stock of another bank, something's up.At the other bank.That other bank is CoreStates Financial Corp., parent of the recently merged Philadelphia National Bank and Hamilton Bank of Lancaster.CoreStates' recent performance has turned the stock from a Wall Street dog to a darling and has prompted a half-dozen or more bank-stock researchers - including at least one analyst at rival First Pennsylvania.
Federal regulators, facing congressional accusations of unwise lending by big U.S. banks to poor countries, have drawn up a plan to tighten their control over such loans.In a joint memorandum sent to Congress late Thursday night, the chiefs of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), along with the comptroller of the currency, proposed a five-point program that also would require banks to publicly disclose more information on how much they have lent.
Donald P. Boarder has joined Public Technology Inc. as program director for fleet management systems.Timothy T. Thahane has been elected to the board of directors of the Centre for Development and Population Activities. Thahane is vice president and secretary of the World Bank.Mary H. Johnson has been named president of Comptex Associates Inc. Eugene Williams Sr. was named executive vice president of the employment training organization.Edward L. Quinn has been named president.
A memorial service will be held Sunday, Dec. 18, at 2:30 p.m. in Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, 7 W. 55th st. here, for John C. Stephenson, a management consultant who worked for 25 years for the Cambridge- based Arthur D. Little Co. Mr. Stephenson, who died Nov. 20 of a heart attack in Athens, was 58. Mr. Stephenson, chairman of the board of the Artisans Cooperative, was in Athens on assignment for the World Bank when he was stricken.
A memorial service will be held Sunday, Dec. 18, at 2:30 p.m. in Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, 7 W. 55th st. here, for John C. Stephenson, a management consultant who worked for 25 years for the Cambridge- based Arthur D. Little Co. Mr. Stephenson, who died Nov. 20 of a heart attack in Athens, was 58. Mr. Stephenson, chairman of the board of the Artisans Cooperative, was in Athens on assignment for the World Bank when he was stricken.
The staggering weight of billions of dollars in troubled foreign loans is pressing heavily on the investment image of American banks.It is widely believed that somehow, some way, the massive debt problems of so-called "less developed countries" will be solved. But even as the painstaking task of working out country- by-country solutions proceeds, the public perception of banks in crisis continues.
Top officers of the International Monetary Fund said yesterday that a plan setting lower limits on assistance to needy nations - adopted after rejection of more-stringent curbs sought by the Reagan Administration - will permit the 146-member fund to continue aiding countries in danger of defaulting on hundreds of billions of dollars in debts.
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