Biz this week!

The Reserve Bank of Australia raised its main interest rate by 25 basis points, to 3.25%, the first central bank in a G20 country to increase rates since the start of the financial maelstrom in September 2008. The move took markets by surprise. Analysts wondered if other governments would follow and hoist their rates, but some cautioned that Australia was a special case, having avoided a recession and retained a comparatively robust banking system.
The failure of a government-bond auction in Latvia caused more concern about the struggling Baltic economies. Separately, the European Union warned nine countries, including Germany and Italy, that their budget deficits were excessively high.
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European banks took further measures to repay bail-out money. Société Générale launched a €4.8 billion ($7 billion) rights issue, €3.4 billion of which will be returned to the state. And ING agreed to sell its Swiss private-banking unit to Julius Baer, a wealth manager, for SFr520m ($505m). ING is offloading assets to help it pay back the Dutch public.
Spain’s Santander completed a share offering for its Brazilian banking unit that raised 14 billion reais ($8 billion), the world’s biggest flotation so far this year, but the unit’s share price fell on its first trading day.
Spurred on by buoyant equity markets, Aviva, a British insurance company, launched an initial public offering of its Dutch subsidiary from which it hopes to raise £1 billion ($1.6 billion). There have been few flotations in America and Europe lately; the value of IPOs in Europe plunged by 83% last year.
Norway’s Telenor reached a tentative agreement to merge its telecoms assets in Russia and Ukraine with those of Alfa, its partner in both countries, with which it has been engaged in a courtroom battle over control of the units. Alfa has stakes in a diverse range of enterprises, including TNK-BP, a joint venture with BP.

(Source: Economist.com)