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International Banks Cut Overseas Loans Last Year

International banks cut back their overseas loans last year in a sharp break with the trend of the 1970s, two separate studies released yesterday said.Banks across the world cut back their international lending last year, and are cutting further this year, according to a report from the International Monetary Fund, the Washington-based agency that lends money to cash-starved nations in exchange for economic policy changes in those nations.

2 Sooners Leave Indiana Bank in Financial Woes Over Strange Collateral Two Oklahoma men who used gold-plated paperweights, a carved elephant tusk and jewels billed as ""the world's largest'' as collateral for hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit had a tiny Indiana bank on the brink of insolvency earlier this year.The pair also left a trail of unpaid debts and bad checks behind them in Oklahoma City as they jet-setted around the country in leased aircraft, laying abortive plans to purchase.

SAVING AND INVESTING\ IN BANKING, THE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN A revolution is taking place in the banking world, a revolution that will touch any consumer who has a bank account and, in time, will force consumers - as it is forcing bankers - to sharpen their pencils. Over the past few years, banks and thrifts have looked with a new awareness on their retail deposit customers, and for good reason. At one time, consumers looked no more critically at their bank than at their toothpaste.

Recent agreements by international lending and fi Recent agreements by international lending and financial institutions: World Bank * A $14 million International Development Association (IDA) credit to Burma for construction of 106 deep tubewells that will provide three townships in the central Dry Zone with groundwater irrigation.* A $63.4 million loan to the Colombian Agricultural Institute from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) to provide consultant services and training for technical.

Ex-Im Bank to Pay $554 Million America's Export-Import Bank will pay out $554 million this year to cover bad loans it guaranteed to private companies in debt-ridden Third World countries, especially Mexico, Ex-Im Bank President William H. Draper III told a Senate subcommittee yesterday.The amount is far more than the bank's usual losses on guaranteed loans, which must be made up from the U.S. Treasury.

SWISS BANKING LAWS SLOWLY CHANGING It is an insular world of numbered bank accounts and staffs sworn to secrecy that attracts the personal fortunes of financial wizards and ordinary tax dodgers alike.Switzerland has 572 major banks with assets, according to 1982 figures, of more than $278 billion. Secrecy plays an important part in their popularity. "Almost no international financial scandal in the past 10 years has not ended up, in part, at a Swiss numbered account," said Beat Koppler.

Great Changes Loom Under Multibank Law After Oct. 1 EDITOR'S NOTE: Following is the first of a series outlining the effects of the new banking law on Oklahoma's financial institutions. Large, medium and small banks are moving to enter the world of multibanking and branching. There is a tomorrow of expansion in sight, but also one of survival.Life will never be same for bankers and their competitors after Oct. 1.The new multibank holding company and branching law taking effect that day.

We Are Not a 'Cuckoo Alliance' We who oppose the $8.4 billion appropriation for the International Monetary Fund have come in for some rough treatment in editorials and columns in The Washington Post. On Sept. 28, a Post editorial called us "a cuckoo alliance of the least reliable elements of the right and left, united in a dim populist resentment of the banks and isolationist hostility to the rest of the world."We in Congress are accustomed to taking our licks from the media.

Words From Your World Banker ONE QUARTER of everything produced in the world is now traded across national borders," A. W. Clausen, the president of the World Bank, observed the other day. He was talking about the developing countries' debts and the importance of not treating them as a crisis. He's right about that. While the debts are unprecedented, they are financing flows of trade and commercial expansion that are also unprecedented.

$6.5 Billion More Sought Jacques de Larosiere, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, told chairmen of the world's biggest banks yesterday that they will have to lend debt-laden Brazil another $6.5 billion between now and the end of 1984 to keep that country solvent.All told, de Larosiere said, the developing world's biggest debtor will need $9 billion in additional financial assistance by the end of 1984.

Recent agreements by international lending and fi Recent agreements by international lending and financial institutions: World Bank * A 100,000,000 Dutch guilder (about $34.1 million) nine-percent, five-year note offering, placed jointly by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Algemene Bank Nederland N.V. The bonds were offered at a price of 99.75 percent, and the yield to initial purchasers was 8.87 percent.Inter-American Development Bank.

Interstate Banking on Precipice: Question No Longer If But When EDITOR'S NOTE: Following is the last of a series outlining the effects of the new banking law on Oklahoma's financial institutions after Oct. 1. Large, medium and small banks are moving to enter the world of multibanking and branching. There is a tomorrow of expansion in sight, but also one of survival.""We appear on the precipice of interstate banking.''

WORLD BANK CUTS INTEREST RATE 0.5% The World Bank yesterday announced a one-half percent reduction in the interest rate for its loans to developing countries.A World Bank official said the rate for the second half of this calendar year was 10.47 percent, down 0.5 percent from the 10.97 percent rate for the first six months of 1983.The rate for the second half of 1982 was 11.43 percent.

BANKER: WORLD DEBT WOES WILL NOT VANISH Time and free trade are the best tools that the world's richer nations have for coping with the debt problems of the world's poorer nations, according to Fritz Leutwiler, the president of the powerful Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland."The debt problem will not just go away," Leutwiler said in a speech delivered last night at the opening session of an international trade and finance conference at the Four Seasons Hotel.

JUDGE PUTS BUTCHER IN BANKRUPTCY Jake Butcher, the politician and World's Fair organizer whose financial empire was linked to nine banks that had multimillion-dollar losses, was declared bankrupt Monday.U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Clive Bare entered an order declaring the financier bankrupt under Chapter 7 of the federal code. The order means Butcher's assets will be sold to pay his debts, estimated at more than $15 million. It came six months after government regulators began dismantling the 27-bank.

Recent agreements by international lending and fi Recent agreements by international lending and financial institutions: World Bank * A total of $239.4 million in International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) loans to the National Bank of Hungary. A $103.4 million loan will finance about 330 grain storage and farm mechanization projects, and a $109 million loan will be used to improve the efficiency of major energy consuming industries.* A $100 million International Development Association (IDA) loan to Bangladesh.

Recent agreements by international lending and fi Recent agreements by international lending and financial institutions: World Bank * An $11 million International Development Association credit to Senegal for technical assistance and training to improve efficiency of public services, especially utilities and transportation.* A $7.6 million IDA credit to Mali to finance the first renewable energy program in that country. Alcohol for making gasohol will be made from molasses produced by two sugar and distillation plants.

ECONOMY IN BRIEF Nation / World West Coast banks to close branches The Bank of America will close 32 branches by the end of the year and Wells Fargo Bank 29 in an effort to reduce costs, executives of both banks said. Bank of America, which now operates 1083 offices, closed 10 branches earlier this year and 15 last year. Wells Fargo said it would close 18 branches in northern California and 11 in southern California by the end of the year. Wells Fargo now has 360 branches.

Recent agreements by international lending and fi Recent agreements by international lending and financial institutions: World Bank * A $22 million International Bank for Reconstruction and Development IBRD loan to Botswana for a water supply project in the capital city of Gaborone. The earthfill structure of the Gaborone Dam, the only source of water, will be raised 8 meters, and treatment and storage facilities will be expanded.* A $250.7 million IBRD loan to the Ivory Coast to help strengthen its structural adjustment program.

FED OFFICIAL WARNS OF INFLATION THREAT U.S. banks have weathered the worst of the world debt crisis, but the nation's economic recovery continues to be threatened by the specter of inflation, a governor of the Federal Reserve Board told a large group of Florida business leaders Friday."We've now reached the point where there is room for expansion and have got into what I think is a reasonable rate of recovery," said Henry C. Wallich.

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