A 62-year-old grandfather walked away unscathed from the crash landing with the 300 other people on board, moments before the plane exploded in a fireball. Mr Khada, from India, then had another stroke of luck when his winning  lottery ticket turned him into a millionaire. The lucky ticket number 0845 was drawn in the Dubai Duty Free Millennium Millionaire lottery at Concourse A at Dubai International Airport. Mr Khadar, who works in a Dubai car dealership, bought the ticket in the airport on his way to Thiruvananthapuram in the south Indian state of Kerala. On his return trip, he was seated on the plane which crash landed and caught fire. He collected his prize on Tuesday, which came just four months before he was due to retire.  He told Gulf News: "I have been working in Dubai for 37 years, and I have always felt like this is my country. "I live a simple life, and now that it’s my time to retire, I feel like God gave me a second life when I survived the plane crash, and blessed me with this money to follow all this up by doing good things".  Mr Khadar plans to move back to India and try to find a job where he can help people in need.  He said: "I am blessed to have finally won with Dubai Duty Free and can’t wait to share the news with my family.  "If you ask me about my plans, I obviously want to help the children in Kerala who are less fortunate than others and need some financial help and medical support  “I don’t want to give it to a charity or build a business, I want to go out and find people who really need help and give them money. I was poor, and I know what people go through".

Six investors, including American funds Apollo Global Management and KKR, are interested in the platform that will manage non-performing loans of approximately 9 billion Euros of the portfolio of "Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena" SpA, sources quoted by Reuters claim. They also state that "Monte dei Paschi" has informed the potential bidders that the deal concerning the platform will go ahead, even though with slightly different terms than initially. The oldest bank in Italy is selling its 27.7 billion Euros non-performing loan portfolio as part of a complex scheme for the securitization of loan, as part of its complex rescue plan.
"Monte dei Paschi" is working together with Italian investment bank "Mediobanca" on creating a platform that would manage the NPL portfolio and to bring in a partner that would improve the debt collection activity. "Monte dei Paschi" has announced on Friday that the platform would manage 9 billion Euros in NPLs, meaning one third of the loans sold as part of the aforementioned scheme. According to sources, the bidders for the "Monte dei Paschi" platform are Cerved Credit Management, KKR in tandem with Varde Partners, Apollo Global Management, Cerberus, Prelios - together with Christofferson Robb & Company - and Lone Star. The "Monte dei Paschi" officials and those of the other parties mentioned made no statements about the report by Reuters.

The reaction of NBR counselor Cristian Bichi, who posted on the NBR website the following clarifications, is increasingly important for BURSA's readers, because the "bail-in" subject (which BURSA has been debating since 2013) has been heavily debated in the comments section. One of the readers who stands out among the commenters on the bursa.ro website (through his competence and information), who uses the nickname Cristi C, argues, (with documented evidence) that the "bail-in" operation will not be applied in Romania. Cristian C. Bichi, is also about to convince us, right now, that the transposition in the Romanian legislation of the European Directive for the Resolution of Banks and Investment firms - in short the "Bail-in law" - does not endanger small depositors, neither Romanians nor those in other European countries: 
"The equivalence between the internal recapitalization and the seizure of the bank deposits of the population (the retirees' money is also being mentioned in this context, claiming that it is at risk) is also incorrect. Such an approach is mistaken, because nothing would happen to guaranteed deposits (those below 100,000 Euros - per depositor and per bank - protected by the Fund for the Guarantee of Bank Deposits), regardless of whether they belong to individuals or to companies".

Gossipers are saying that in a conversation (a private one, of course) Queen Elizabeth the 2nd has asked for three reasons why Great Britain should continue to be a member of the European Union. Because she didn't get them, more than half of the people she rules over has voted in favor of the UK exiting the EU, thus putting themselves at odds, with the other half, which voted to stay!! The queen's skepticism, otherwise well tempered and apparently benign, has generated a vote that has already caused her to lose her people, is about to cause the loss of her Kingdom, and in the end, unavoidably, the Crown! Perhaps, for a sovereign that has already ruled for more than 60 years, these losses are not so great! To us, however, who have difficulty understanding how Shakespeare, Keynes and Churchill could be expelled from Europe, based on the vote of the British, even through a referendum, this loss is hard to gauge and impossible to accept. Even though it may seem tardy, here in Bucharest, we can now provide the British sovereign the reasons she is looking for. How did we come up with them? Easy!

Mehmet Simsek, the deputy prime minister, tried to dispel fears on Thursday that the country would return to the deep repression seen the last time it was under similar measures. "The state of emergency in Turkey won't include restrictions on movement, gatherings and free press, etc. It isn't martial law of 1990s," he said. "I'm confident Turkey will come out of this with much stronger democracy, better functioning market economy and enhanced investment climate." But as he made his statement, the crackdown spread to journalists and human rights lawyers. Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a leading newspaper columnist and lawyer, was arrested at the airport as he tried to leave the country.  Police also raided the printing house of well-known satirical magazine Le Man...On Thursday, Austria became the first country to take diplomatic action over the crackdown, saying it would summon Turkey's ambassador to discuss Ankara's "increasingly authoritarian" behaviour and allegations it had been behind recent Turkish protests in Vienna. Meanwhile, the UK’s Foreign Affairs Committee said it was to launch an inquiry into Britain’s relations with Turkey and the impact of the crackdown on democracy and human rights.

 Ever since the announcement of the new stress test, in February 2016, the EBA has stated that "passing requirements are not included, because the objective of the test is to use it as a supervision instrument, and the results will be discussed individually with the participating banks, where actions for improving the situation will also be proposed".  The methodology for assessing the solvency as part of the stress test is found on the official website of the EBA, www.eba.europa.eu and should at least engender a minimum of faith among investors when it comes to the banks' abilities to deal with non-performing loans and capitalization deficit. Unfortunately, a general state of "fatigue" seems to have taken place in the Eurozone, amid the waiting in vain for the results promised by the central banks and governments. According to Reuters, amid the disputes between the European and Italian authorities, concerning the initiation of a new bail-out program for Italian banks, but without the prior application of the bail-in procedure, Mario Draghi, the president of the ECB, has expressed his support for the governmental aid offered to Italian banks, because "such a program will allow them to sell some of their non-performing loans, which reduce their lending ability". But is such a "release" of Italian banks' lending capability rational and prudent, when the current volume of non-performing loans shows that they are incapable of correctly evaluating risks?  In the recent meeting of finance ministers of the G20 countries, Pier Carlo Padoan, Italy's finance minister said that "we are going in the right direction and there are no risks when it comes to systemic stability", according to an article in Financial Times. Padoan also rejected the possibility of a bail-in, as he said that such a measure would not be necessary.

The US Federal Reserve’s retreat from four rate rises this year has had a catalytic effect, reviving the fortunes of emerging markets and once again lifting the Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of those who have borrowed $11 trillion in dollars outside US jurisdiction.

The Fed is in effect acting as the central bank for the whole world, giving a shot in the arm to an international financial system that is has never been so tightly-linked to the dollar or to US borrowing costs – at least since the end of the Gold Standard.  The Japanese are launching a giant fiscal package – in theory 5.7pc of GDP – while France, Italy, and other eurozone states have taken advantage of the Brexit scare to end austerity more quickly than planned and to prime pump their economies. The net effect is double-barrelled monetary and fiscal stimulus across the world probably overwhelms any of the inchoate and mostly political worries stemming from Brexit – at least in the short-term. It is hard to see what can now justify Morgan Stanley’s decision to raise its risk probability of global recession over the next year to 40pc after the referendum.