1 End game looms for Greece crisis (Helena Smith in
The Guardian/Observer) Almost five months after he assumed power, Greek prime
minister, Alexis Tsipras has come to a fork in the road: either he accepts the
painful terms of a cash-for-reform deal that ensures Greece’s place in the
single currency or he decides to go it alone, faithful to the vision of his
anti-austerity Syriza party. Either way, the endgame is upon him.
Thursday’s meeting of eurozone finance ministers is
viewed as the last chance to clinch a deal before Athens’s already extended
bailout accord expires on 30 June. The drama of Greece’s battle to keep
bankruptcy at bay has, with the ticking of the clock, become ever darker in
tone. What started out as good-tempered brinkmanship has turned increasingly
sour as negotiations to release desperately needed bailout funds have
repeatedly hit a wall over Athens’s failure to produce persuasive reforms.
Last week the mood became more febrile as it emerged
that Eurocrats, for the first time, had debated the possibility of cash-starved
Athens defaulting. The revelation came amid reports that Germany’s chancellor,
Angela Merkel, was resigned to letting Greece go. Berlin is by far the biggest
contributor to the €240bn bailout propping up the near-bankrupt state.
With both sides seemingly determined to take
negotiations to the brink, the nerve-racking game of poker was raised a notch
as Tsipras’s closest aides resumed talks with technical teams in Brussels. The
EU and IMF say the ball is now in Greece’s court. Following his rejection of
their demands as “absurd” last week, the young premier is hoping the officials
will be able to bridge outstanding differences on the basis of a new set of
“counter proposals”.
2 Russia, China gained from Snowden files (BBC) UK
intelligence agents have been moved because Russia and China have access to
classified information which reveals how they operate, a senior government
source has told the BBC. According to the Sunday Times, Moscow and Beijing have
deciphered documents stolen by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The government source said the countries "have
information" that led to agents being moved but added there was "no
evidence" any had been harmed. Mr Snowden leaked data two years ago. The
former CIA contractor, now living in Russia, left the US in 2013 after leaking
details of extensive internet and phone surveillance by American intelligence
to the media.
His information made international headlines in June
2013 when the Guardian newspaper reported that the US National Security Agency
was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. Mr
Snowden is believed to have downloaded 1.7 million secret documents before he
left the US.
3 A $1trn market as Saudi Arabia opens its bourses
to world (Muzaffar Rizvi in Khaleej Times) The opening of Saudi equities to
foreign investors this week is a first step towards joining the MSCI Index by
2017, which will be raising the profile of markets in the Middle East and North
Africa (Mena) by up to $1 trillion, experts say.
Analysts and experts said the opening of the Saudi
bourses is a major move in international markets since China allowed foreign
investment in local market more than a decade ago. They said the $570 billion
market capitalisation of the kingdom is more than the combined value of the
Moscow, Malaysia and Mexico markets, and that it would be the seventh-largest
emerging nation in the world if it joins the MSCI Index in next two years.
Experts expect that the Saudi market may attract $10
billion to $15 billion in additional foreign inflows into the region. Banks,
insurance, petrochemicals, healthcare and retail stocks will be the major
beneficiaries of the Saudi move that will lead to a general shift of attention
to Saudi companies and potentially pave the way for new business joint ventures
and further integration of Saudi businesses into international markets, they
added.
Yong-Wei Lee, head of Mena equities at Emirates NBD
Asset Management, said: “Three Mena markets — the UAE [$230 billion], Qatar
[$180 billion] and Egypt [$70 billion], with a combined market cap of $480 billion
— are already included in the MSCI Emerging Market Index. Adding the $570
billion Saudi market, the Mena markets could top $1 trillion and that would
place the region in a more prominent position than before.”
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