The whereabouts of the governor of Libya’s central bank, the man who holds the key to the Gaddafi regime’s finances, have confounded officials, diplomats and bankers who have been desperate to find him over the past two weeks.
Farhat Omar Bengdara has spent much of the time since the outbreak of the uprising against Muammer Gaddafi outside Libya but it is has been unclear whether he supported the regime or was co-operating with the opposition. Read more
Libya & the trouble with TIC
Data from the Treasury International Capital system have always got a lot of stick. The system is meant to show foreign holdings of US assets broken down by country (and vice versa) but has a big problem with ‘custodial bias’: it struggles to track funds beyond the financial centre where they are held, e.g. the UK, Switzerland, the Channel Islands, various dodgy Caribbean destinations etc.
Recent sanctions on Libya have created a fascinating natural experiment on just how big that ‘custodial bias’ actually is. Does the amount of Libyan assets in the US reported to TIC match up with the amount of Libyan assets frozen in the US? Answer: a resounding ‘No’. Read more
Libya’s central bank plans to issue two licences for foreign banks to set up units in the country. Foreign banks will have full management control of the new lenders and a 49 per cent stake, the Tripoli-based central bank told Bloomberg today. The remaining 51 per cent will be held by domestic investors. The banks, which must have international presence and a healthy credit rating, must express their interest by March 30. Read more
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Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS
Michael Steen, Frankfurt bureau chief, covers the ECB and the eurozone's economies. He joined the Financial Times in 2007 as Amsterdam correspondent and later worked as a front page news editor in London. Before joining the FT, he spent nine years as a correspondent at Reuters, mostly in foreign postings that included a previous stint in Frankfurt, as well as Moscow, Kiev and central Asia. He read German and Russian at Cambridge.RSS
Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS
Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS
Claire Jones is Money Supply economics team writer, based in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal and CentralBanking.com. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS
