The Morning Roundup distills the top financial stories from the region and around the globe into bite-sized chunks for your daily consumption.
International story of the day:
US bank stress test results are released amid less-terrible-than-before economic data
It has been an interesting weekend across the Atlantic. As expected, the US government on Thursday
released stress-test results
for the country's major banks, and it turns out that most won't need to raise new capital. Those that do, including Citi,
Wells Fargo
and Bank of America, are to
raise a combined $75bn
by November, a lower figure than analysts expected. Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley have
already raised fresh capital
, though
some analysts say
Morgan
needs way more than the $1.8bn it was told to raise. Meanwhile, GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors, appears to be in
bad shape
. It may need a
$11.5bn bailout
from the government. And America's regional banks are
mired in troubles
of their own, which
Breakingviews says
may cause a wave of mergers. Also over the weekend, American jobs figures came in, showing that
people are still losing jobs
, but at a slower pace than before.
Regional story of the day:
Taking stock
First-quarter results continue to pour in from companies in the region, and overall, things are looking a little more positive and less uncertain than was the case a few months back. Markets have been on an upward swing lately, punctuated by better-than-expected results from a bevy of local companies late last week and into the weekend. Air Arabia's first-quarter profits
went up 32 per cent
; Mashreqbank also
came out in the black
. Shuaa Capital, the Dubai-based investment bank,
reported a loss
late on Thursday, but the results came out a bit better than in previous quarters. Kuwait's central bank governor said over the weekend that his country's financial system was
returning to stability
. Today's
IMF briefing at the DIFC
may shed more light on just where we stand on the path to recovery as GCC officials push towards a delayed monetary union.
The rest:
Personal finance gurus: all wrong, all the time? [
The Big Money
]
The US bailout won't work, a large hedge fund firm says [
Dealbook
]
Ratings agencies must reform, might even be controlled by investors [
The Deal
]
An
excellent
interactive chart on US banks' capital needs [
WSJ
]
Can it really be this bad? A cemetery in the US files for foreclosure [
Freakonomics
]
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Gender equality in the workplace still 200 years away
It will take centuries to achieve gender parity in workplaces around the globe, according to a December report from the World Economic Forum.
The WEF study said there had been some improvements in wage equality in 2018 compared to 2017, when the global gender gap widened for the first time in a decade.
But it warned that these were offset by declining representation of women in politics, coupled with greater inequality in their access to health and education.
At current rates, the global gender gap across a range of areas will not close for another 108 years, while it is expected to take 202 years to close the workplace gap, WEF found.
The Geneva-based organisation's annual report tracked disparities between the sexes in 149 countries across four areas: education, health, economic opportunity and political empowerment.
After years of advances in education, health and political representation, women registered setbacks in all three areas this year, WEF said.
Only in the area of economic opportunity did the gender gap narrow somewhat, although there is not much to celebrate, with the global wage gap narrowing to nearly 51 per cent.
And the number of women in leadership roles has risen to 34 per cent globally, WEF said.
At the same time, the report showed there are now proportionately fewer women than men participating in the workforce, suggesting that automation is having a disproportionate impact on jobs traditionally performed by women.
And women are significantly under-represented in growing areas of employment that require science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills, WEF said.
* Agence France Presse