Niea Milwaukee 2009 Again

Kids Get Money-Wise at Camp

Posted by TerranceV | Business | Posted on May 17th, 2012

By MARY PILON

This summer, droves of school-age children will attend summer camp, where they will paddle canoes, play tennis and make crafts from paste and yarn. Others, will go to finance camp, where they will take excursions to a local bank or delve into budgeting and investing simulations. Rather than singing around the campfire, they will chant personal-finance mantras like these sung at Camp Millionaire in Santa Barbara, Calif.: “Financial freedom is your choice” and “Assets feed you, liabilities eat you.”

Ed Koren

In the past, business and finance camps attracted high-achieving high-school students. Now, with the country’s uncertain economy, financial education is expanding to an unlikely audience — younger kids, even grade-school students. They are also reaching out to those from diverse economic backgrounds. And the lessons are surprisingly sophisticated, teaching campers how to rebalance portfolios, invest in real estate and use credit cards without getting dinged on fees.

At Camp Millionaire, campers in five days create a minieconomy based around “moola” — mock currency that features a cow’s portrait — which kids use to spend, invest in stocks and compete with each other. They also use the fake currency to pay their “bills,” running around and depositing moola in large envelopes with labels like “phone bill” and “credit card bill.” Parents spend the real moola to send their kids to the weeklong session, which ranges from $279 to $300. Scholarships are available, based on financial need.

“Adults underestimate kids’ abilities. Investing — they’ll get it and be interested in it,” says counselor Pamela Capalad.

Andrew Adams, of Santa Barbara, attended the camp twice, once when he was 10 years old and again two years later. “He was coming home with words like ‘adversely affect your credit score,’ ” says his mother, Denice Adams.

Andrew pointed out to his mother that her credit-card billing cycle had changed, and that she wasn’t keeping up with payments. Her delays were racking up late fees, jacking up her interest rate and hurting her credit score. After considering her non-discretionary household expenses (his words), Andrew also pronounced that the mortgage on their Santa Barbara home was too high for her income. Now 15 years old, Andrew has launched his own small travel business and is a financial-news junkie.

Gauging Risk

At YoungBiz’s Smart Start to Money Camp in Sarasota, Fla., campers ages 13 to 18 are asked to toss a ball into a bucket, earning more points the farther away they stand. It aims to teach kids about risk tolerance and lead them into a discussion about stocks and asset allocation. How far away from the bucket they’re willing to stand might tell them something about their investing style.

Bonding Over Banking

Girls only? Read about finance camps for girls, and join a discussion on WSJ.com’s Front Lines.

Campers pay $100 to $300 for the three-day session, in which they form teams and compete to create the best portfolio. In 2001, during one of the first camps, one camper pleaded with his teammates to buy stock in a then-risky company, eBay

. His peers lobbied for safer bets, like utility companies. After a fiery debate, the team passed on eBay but agreed on an alternative stock allocation. They won the competition because counselors were so impressed with their cooperation.

Camp Challenge, a joint effort between the North Carolina Bankers Association and 4-H, mixes financial education in the morning with traditional activities, such as horseback riding or swimming, in the afternoon. For $350, kids 10 to 14 years old learn the basics of everyday finance using the FDIC’s Money Smart curriculum.

Robin Diamond

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke with campers from Camp Challenge.

Camp Challenge is also part of the America’s Promise Alliance, a business and nonprofit cooperative that works to reach students at risk of drug abuse or dropping out, for example. The weeklong overnight camp in Westfield, N.C., has drawn the attention of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who have been known to mingle with campers when they’re in the area.

In Denver, the Young Americans Center for Financial Education takes a macroeconomic approach to financial education.

Creating a Ghost Town

In weeklong sessions that cost $185, fourth- and fifth-graders take part in large-scale simulations of the economy of a small town. Campers apply for jobs. They create business plans for 17 different businesses, patronize others along Main Street and even buy health insurance. (It costs two AmeriDollars.) One year, the counselors had a camp of savers, and AmeriTowne turned into a ghost town when the kids refused to spend any money. The incident sparked a fruitful discussion about free enterprise. Counselors asked campers to imagine what would happen to AmeriTowne’s Main Street if no one spent any money in the long term. The grim consequences of an inactive economy soon became apparent, especially when they realized that they, too, were business owners.

Global Economics

The fifth- and sixth-graders take the minitown approach and bump it up a notch to the International Towne. It is like a model United Nations with a robust focus on trade, currencies and deficits. They’re thrown questions about environmental protection and sustainability. When counselors asked campers to write down how they would cope with limited water resources on the planet, they ran out of paper.

“They really run the world at the end of the week,” former banker C.J. Juleff, vice president of programming for the camp, said.

Write to Mary Pilon at mary.pilon@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D1

UPDATE 6-Ex-Murdoch editor Brooks charged in hacking scandal

Posted by TerranceV | Business | Posted on May 17th, 2012

* Ex-editor charged along with husband, staff

* Offence could lead to jail time

* To appear in court on June 13

* Move is blow for Murdoch and Cameron

* Husband says Brooks is subject of “witch hunt”

By Michael Holden and Kate Holton

LONDON, May 15 (Reuters) – Rebekah Brooks, a close
confidante of Rupert Murdoch, was charged on Tuesday with
interfering with a police investigation into a phone hacking
scandal that has rocked the tycoon’s empire and sent shockwaves
through the British political establishment.

Brooks, 43, was charged with conspiring to remove boxes of
archive records from Murdoch’s London headquarters, concealing
material from detectives, and hiding documents, computers and
other electronic equipment from the police.

If found guilty she could face a prison sentence.

The charges against Brooks, her husband and four others are
the first since police re-launched an investigation into alleged
illegal practices at Murdoch’s British newspapers following
accusations that the extent of wrongdoing had been covered up.

The news is a personal blow for the world’s most powerful
media boss and also embarrassing for British Prime Minister
David Cameron, who was close friends with Brooks and sent her
text messages of support when the alleged offences took place.

Murdoch is facing increasing pressure in Britain.

He has been forced to close one newspaper, withdraw a major
takeover bid for a lucrative TV group and been described in a
parliamentary committee report as someone who is not fit to run
a major international company.

Murdoch’s closeness to Brooks, instantly recognisable for
her mane of flame-red hair, was highlighted last year when the
mogul flew into London to tackle the hacking scandal, put his
arm around her and declared that she was his top priority.

The charges relate to those frenzied days last July, when
Murdoch shut the 168-year-old News of the World, a top-selling
Sunday tabloid, and Brooks was first arrested.

Police said “unemployed” Brooks would face three charges of
conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. All six are due
appear in court in London on June 13.

“I have concluded … there is sufficient evidence for there
to be a realistic prospect of conviction,” said Alison Levitt,
principal legal advisor to Britain’s director of public
prosecutions, in a rare televised statement.

“All these matters relate to the ongoing police
investigation into allegations of phone hacking and corruption
of public officials in relation to the News of the World and The
Sun newspapers,” Levitt said.

Also charged were Brooks’s racehorse trainer husband Charlie
Brooks, her secretary and other staff including her driver and
security officials from News International, the British
newspaper arm of Murdoch’s News Corp media empire.

Rebekah Brooks said she was baffled by the decision to
charge her. “I cannot express my anger enough that those close
to me have unfairly been dragged into this,” she said, emerging
from her lawyer’s offices with her husband, dressed in a dark
trouser suit.

Charlie Brooks, who was at school with Cameron at the
exclusive Eton College, said he believed his wife was the
subject of a “witch hunt”, and that he and others were being
used as scapegoats.

“I have grave doubts that my wife will ever get a fair
trial, given the volume of biased commentary which she has been
subject to,” he said.

CUSTODIAL SENTENCE

Earlier, photographers surrounded the London police station
where Brooks was questioned, and chased her limousine down the
street as she was driven away – something her newspapers
routinely inflicted on others while she was in charge.

“Perverting the course of justice is a very serious
offence,” said Mark Spragg, Consultant Solicitor at Keystone
Law. “If found guilty, a custodial sentence is inevitable.”

The maximum sentence for the offence is theoretically a life
prison term although that would be unlikely, with a sentence of
between a few months and three or four years more common.

A spokesman for Cameron said the prime minister had not been
informed in advance of Tuesday’s announcement, and would not be
commenting further.

Ivor Gaber, professor of political journalism at London’s
City University, said: “This is a symbolic moment for British
media and politics.”

“This yet again raises questions about the prime minister’s
judgment, that he chose to associate both professionally and
socially with somebody who is facing charges which could result
in imprisonment,” he said.

Prime Minister Cameron has also been criticised for hiring
as his spokesman Andy Coulson, another ex-News of the World
editor who resigned from the newspaper in 2007 after its royal
reporter and a private detective were jailed for phone hacking.

News International long scapegoated the journalist as a
“rogue reporter” and Coulson said he knew nothing of the illegal
activities, but he quit Cameron’s office last year after police
reopened their investigations. He has since been arrested.

More than 160 officers are examining claims that journalists
at the News of the World routinely hacked into the phones of
hundreds of celebrities, politicians and victims of crime to
generate front-page stories.

They are also investigating whether staff hacked into
computers and made illegal payments to public officials,
including the police, to get ahead in their reporting.

Almost 50 people have been arrested, with a tax official and
a woman the latest to be held by detectives on Tuesday morning.

“HORSEGATE” AND THE PYJAMA PARTY

The explosive saga has shone a light on close ties between
the media, British politicians and the police, with Brooks one
of the central characters.

Ministers who previously overtly courted Murdoch and the
backing of his papers turned on him last year, forcing the
81-year-old to withdraw a $12 billion bid for British pay TV
group BSkyB.

Under pressure, Cameron admitted he had gone riding with
Charlie Brooks on a horse given to Rebekah by police, an
admission that critics dubbed “horsegate” and seized on as
evidence of an overly cosy relationship.

He also attended a Christmas party at the couple’s house in
2010, at a time when the government was deciding whether to
approve the BSkyB deal.

Dubbed by some Murdoch’s “fifth daughter”, Brooks edited the
News of the World from 2000 to 2003 and went on to become the
first female editor of the Sun daily tabloid, Britain’s most
widely read newspaper, for six years.

With her close links to the upper echelons of the British
establishment including a string of prime ministers and senior
police officers, Brooks was promoted to run Murdoch’s British
newspaper arm from 2009 to 2011.

She had close ties with Cameron’s predecessor as prime
minister, Gordon Brown of the now-opposition Labour party, whose
wife Sarah hosted a sleepover in 2008 that was attended by
Brooks and Murdoch’s wife Wendi and daughter Elisabeth.

Brooks was also close to Tony Blair.

But she was forced to stand down last July under a tide of
revelations, and was arrested two days later over allegations of
phone hacking and corruption.

Brooks was detained again in March this year, along with her
husband, on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.
Detectives have not concluded their investigations into the
other potential offences.

During day-long questioning at a public inquiry into media
ethics last week, Brooks said she and Cameron had frequently
exchanged text messages and that he would occasionally sign them
off “LOL”, by which he meant “lots of love”.

Chris Bryant, an opposition lawmaker and hacking victim,
said: “I fear the prime minister will have some questions to
answer about the kind of company he has been keeping.”

The others charged on Tuesday were Cheryl Carter, Brooks’s
personal assistant, Mark Hanna, the head of security at News
International, Paul Edwards, her chauffeur, and Daryl Jorsling,
who provided security for Brooks.

Tax Prep for the Novice

Posted by TerranceV | Business | Posted on May 16th, 2012

Discovering The True Cost Of At-Home Caregiving

Posted by TerranceV | Business | Posted on May 16th, 2012

Story By: by Marilyn Geewax

Adults have been providing an increasing percentage of financial assistance to their parents in recent years. Below are the national average annual costs and daily rates paid for various types of adult care.

Ida Christian gets help from her granddaughter, Yolanda Hunter (left), in blowing out the candles on the cake celebrating her 89th birthday.

Like many other caregivers, Yolanda Hunter thought the “job” of watching over her grandmother would not last all that long. Her thoughts at the time she quit her job: “I can do this for a year, help settle things down, try and take the pressure off a little bit,” she said.

Her goal was to find a good home nursing aide to help her grandmother so that she could jump back into the workforce. But two-and-a-half years later, it “didn’t quite work out that way,” she says.

Although Christian’s savings are enough to provide a modest salary for her granddaughter, the amount is not great enough to allow Hunter to prepare for her own retirement.

So Hunter had to switch gears again and begin trying to re-enter the labor market at a time when nearly 13 million other people also were seeking work.

As this year began, she said she recognized that “I desperately want to get back to work, because I’m mentally tired and I feel — unless I win the lottery — I feel like I’m missing out on so much in terms of my future and making sure I have a stable future.”

But then again, “there’s that part of me that is very, very torn about leaving her, because no matter how compassionate the next person may be, they’re not going to do the extra things that you’re going to do,” she said.

Some women’s groups say Congress should expand tax credits available to people with dependent relatives and create “caregiving credits” to limit the Social Security penalty for time spent out of the labor force to provide family care.

Family Matters: Meet The Families

The Caregiver Credit Campaign, an advocacy effort, says such help is warranted because without voluntary caregivers, “hundreds of billions of government dollars would be spent on alternatives like institutions.”

An Indiana University report says “informal caregivers provide service that would otherwise cost the Medicare system $375 billion a year.”

Meryl Comer, president of the Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative, knows about the financial penalties of caregiving. At age 50, she was a journalist, living in a Maryland suburb outside of Washington, D.C. Then her husband, age 58 at the time, was stricken with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

She quit her job to become his at-home caregiver. Then her mother got Alzheimer’s too. Now, 18 years after quitting her outside-the-home job, she continues to care for her husband and elderly mother.

She argues that corporations should do more to help their employees handle adult-care needs while staying on the job.

“How do we do provide flex time for people who are taking care of their parents?” she asked. “The human resources policies [for caring for the elderly] need to mirror the child-care policies,” she said. “If corporations want women to be productive in the workforce, they have to make some accommodations,” such as allowing them more flexible schedules, family-leave time and telecommuting opportunities.

Comer said corporations have come a long way over the past 30 years in terms of responding to the needs of working mothers with young children. “Now they have to do the same for the other end of the age spectrum,” she said.

Norfolk Southern Shares Can Head North

Posted by TerranceV | Business | Posted on May 15th, 2012

Talking About ETFs

Posted by TerranceV | Business | Posted on May 15th, 2012

By ARI I. WEINBERG

For the past 15 years, Deborah Fuhr has spent her days deep in the weeds of exchange-traded funds. As an investment strategist at Morgan Stanley

and then global head of ETF research at ETF sponsor BlackRock Inc.,

she observed as the industry grew from a few funds with a couple billion dollars in assets to more than 1,000 products with more than $1 trillion in assets.

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In February, six months after leaving BlackRock, she co-founded London-based ETFGI LLP to educate and advise institutions on the nuances and uses of ETFs and asset allocation.

Ms. Fuhr sat down with The Wall Street Journal to discuss her perspective on the fastest-growing market for investor assets.

Here are edited excerpts of the conversation:

Unstoppable Growth?

WSJ: Over the past few years, the growth of ETF assets has seemed inexorable. Is there anything on the horizon that could change that?

Ms. Fuhr: The growth of ETFs will continue simply because the types of exposures that you can use ETFs for are large and growing. For example, ETFs have allowed investors to get access to markets in Korea, Taiwan or India that are difficult to enter in a very efficient fashion.

Graham Tonks

Analyst Deborah Fuhr has followed ETFs from their early days

Another benefit that will continue to spur ETF asset growth is cost. Advisers and individual investors get access to the very same toolbox as institutional investors—in breadth and depth of countries and sectors—at the exact same annual cost.

WSJ: Could a market disruption put the brakes on growth?

Ms. Fuhr: Although bond ETFs have grown significantly in the past few years [offering an alternative to stock portfolios], a repeat of the financial crisis could flush money out of ETFs and into bank accounts and other safe products.

WSJ: Will actively managed stock ETFs take off?

Ms. Fuhr: It depends on how you define active management. Of ETFs structured as mutual funds, only 37 of 1,154 are active in the traditional sense of a portfolio manager picking stocks, bonds or ETFs. They represent less than 1% of assets. If you could consider ETFs based on non-market-cap-weighted indexes as a form of active management, then it is actually much larger.

WSJ: Focusing on traditional stock picking, do you expect a significant migration of actively managed mutual funds to active ETF form?

Ms. Fuhr: No. If we think about an active manager making concentrated bets on a limited number of stocks, he won’t feel comfortable with an ETF given the requirements for daily transparency. It would be like your grandmother giving away her secret sauce.

Plus, when you look at how institutions invest—based on three-year track records and [using only] funds with over $100 million in assets—you’ve got a chicken-and-egg problem given the current size of active ETFs.

Deborah Fuhr, partner at ETFGI, talks with WSJ’s Ari Weinberg about the differences between exchange-traded funds and notes, plus she explains some of the ETF products that can help track commodities.

Investor Knowledge

WSJ: Over the 15 years you have been following ETFs, what has surprised you?

Ms. Fuhr: I was most surprised in the early days by how many people were holding ETFs with no idea in what they were actually investing. I would talk to institutional investors about SPDRs and QQQ, but they thought they were just holding securities as opposed to actual funds. Surprisingly, that need for education continues today and is actually getting greater.

Many investors now know what ETFs are, but until they decide to use one, they don’t ask enough questions to be comfortable.

WSJ: Do individual investors and advisers know how to trade ETFs? Do they hurt themselves in how they do it?

Ms. Fuhr: Most ETFs that individual investors or advisers should be using are large and liquid, so they can buy them safely without affecting the market.

But when you start to consider exposures in niche markets, you or your adviser need to be very clear about how much you should be buying and holding and whether your trade itself could affect the market for the ETF and the underlying securities. As a general rule, never trade more than 20% of average daily volume. For an ETF that doesn’t trade, you could be it.

Just because there is this huge toolbox of products, not all of these products are appropriate for all investors. And just because a new one comes to market doesn’t mean you should change [your holdings].

WSJ: I’m an ordinary individual investor. What should I know about ETFs that I probably don’t?

Ms. Fuhr: Make sure that you know and understand the benchmark that the product is designed to track. Products with similar names can be based on market capitalization, equal weighting or some other indexing methodology that can deliver very different returns than what you expected.

But you should also be careful about non-fund exchange-traded products that weren’t originally designed with the retail investor in mind and that use structures that don’t have diversification requirements and other protections—for example, single-exposure commodity funds, like SPDR Gold

or funds that look to get exposure to oil through the futures market. Issuers have moved beyond the fund structure to offer products that imply different risks, different tax [treatment], regulatory requirements and performance and costs.

Mr. Weinberg is a writer in New York. Email him at
reports@wsj.com.

A version of this article appeared May 7, 2012, on page R4 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Talking About ETFs.

Four Greek parties to take part in Monday talks-source

Posted by TerranceV | Business | Posted on May 14th, 2012

ATHENS May 13 (Reuters) – Greece’s president has invited
the leaders of the country’s three biggest parties plus a
smaller, moderate leftist group to take part in talks to form a
coalition government on Monday, a senior presidency official
told Reuters.

“There will be a meeting with the leaders of the three big
parties and (Democratic Left leader Fotis) Kouvelis,” the
official said.

Greece’s three biggest parties are conservative New
Democracy and the Socialist PASOK which back the country’s
international bailout and the radical leftist SYRIZA, which
opposes it.

UPDATE 2-TVN strives to cut debt in tough ad market

Posted by TerranceV | Business | Posted on May 14th, 2012

* Q1 net profit of 185 mln zlotys vs 159 mln in Reuters poll

* Sees flat TV ad market 2012, hopes for more ad spending in
H2

* Wants to cut net debt/EBITDA to around 3 from 4.1 on Onet
sale

(Adds more detail, management and analyst comments)

By Adrian Krajewski

WARSAW, May 11 (Reuters) – Polish media group TVN
said it wanted to cut debt with asset sales in the face of a
stagnant TV advertising market, after it swung to a
larger-than-expected first-quarter net profit, helped by a
revaluation of euro-denominated debt.

TVN has relied on local editions of shows including the
X-Factor and Dancing with the Stars, as well as its own
productions, to become one of Poland’s top two private
broadcasters.

But production spending and an expensive purchase of pay-TV
unit “n” from its parent have burdened the group with a large
debt pile susceptible to currency swings, which skew its bottom
line every quarter.

A stronger zloty was the main reason behind the group’s 185
million zloty net profit in the first quarter – 16 percent more
than the market expected.

Hit by high debt costs and a stagnant TV advertising market,
TVN has been struggling to spin off assets, launching talks to
sell control of Poland’s No.1 web portal Onet to a joint venture
of German publisher Axel Springer and Swiss Ringier.

Last year, the group moved to combine its loss-making pay-TV
platform ‘n’ with the Polish arm of Vivendi’s Canal+,
with the latter also securing a stake in TVN’s majority owner.

The partnership with Vivendi is still pending regulatory
approval, while the deal for Onet, in which TVN plans to sell a
75-percent stake, is to be signed at the end of May or start of
June, with closing expected by the start of the fourth quarter.

“The bulk of the proceeds from the Onet sale will be used to
deleverage,” TVN chief executive Markus Tellenbach told a news
conference.

“The ratio of net debt to (core earnings) EBITDA at around 3
seems prudent and technically possible thanks to this deal,” he
added.

The group closed the first quarter with a ratio of 4.1.

LACKLUSTRE MARKET

TVN’s revenues came in flat at 419.3 million zlotys in the
first quarter, even as the television advertising market shrunk
2.3 percent.

The group expects a flat TV ad market in 2012, having
earlier dropped its forecast of 11 percent sales growth due to
uncertainty. It is hoping spending will kick in after Poland
co-hosts the Euro 2012 soccer championships in June and July.

“April was the worst month so far this year in terms of ad
spending,” TVN deputy head Piotr Walter said.

“We believe that was due to unfavourable Easter timing. The
long May weekend and the prospect of Euro may have pushed
advertising spending to the second half of this year.”

The Onet deal is viewed as a last-minute bid to counter the
also sluggish local online market. Pre-sale revenue stream
restructuring was the main cause of Onet’s 3-percent sales
decline against online market growth of 8-9 percent in the first
three months of the year.

“Weak revenue and margins are visible at what’s left in the
group, that is Onet and television,” DM BZ WBK analyst Dariusz
Gorski said. “Not taking into account the currency swings, TVN
results are weak. The pressure on media companies is rather
high.”

Excluding the pay-TV platform, treated as a discontinued
operation after the Vivendi deal, TVN’s EBITDA fell 8.8 percent
to 108 million zlotys, while EBITDA margin dwindled 2.7
percentage points to 25.7 percent. On a comparable basis, EBITDA
was down 15 percent.

Shares in TVN fell 0.9 percent at 1053 GMT, in line with the
Warsaw’s bluechip WIG20 index.
($1 = 3.2641 Polish zlotys)

(Additional reporting by Agnieszka Barteczko; Editing by Mark
Potter and Helen Massy-Beresford)

AVG Tech shares rise on strong results, outlook

Posted by TerranceV | Business | Posted on May 13th, 2012

<span class="articleLocation”>(Reuters) – Shares of AVG Technologies NV (AVG.N) rose as much as 13 percent after the company handily topped first-quarter expectations and forecast a strong full year.

First-quarter revenue rose 37 percent to $83 million, helped by higher sales at its platform-derived segment.

Analysts expected revenue of $76.7 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The company, which went public in February, also forecast second-quarter and full-year ahead of expectations.

AVG, which is known for its free suite of anti-virus products, monetizes its large user base through targeted advertisements and by driving traffic to online search companies such as Google Inc (GOOG.O) and Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O).

AVG shares, which have fallen 20 percent until Thursday’s close, were trading up 9 percent at $13.88 on Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. They touched a high of $14.47 earlier.

(Reporting by Himank Sharma in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Banks cut exposure to government debt

Posted by TerranceV | Business | Posted on May 13th, 2012

Beirut Lebanon’s banks are luring more deposits and reducing exposure to government debt, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh said, two benchmarks that rating companies say are critical to the country’s credit worthiness.

Bank deposits in the most indebted Arab country have risen at an annualised rate of about 8 per cent this year to $122 billion (Dh447.7 billion), Salameh said in an interview at his office in Beirut Friday.

Bank credit to private businesses and consumers has risen to more than $40 billion, while lending to the government stands at about $28 billion, extending a reversal that started in 2009 in how the country’s banks deploy funds, he said.

The performance may help allay the concerns of credit assessors who are watching out for signs that the crisis in neighbouring Syria is spilling over into the Lebanese economy and banks.

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