Greece referendum kills bailout deal hopes says EU

Angry eurozone ministers said Greece's shock decision Saturday to hold a referendum on its bailout had closed the door on the chances of a deal to save Athens from default and a possible euro exit.

The most dramatic day in the five-month crisis saw long lines of people queueing at cash machines in Greece after the announcement by leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras amid fears of a bank run and possible capital controls.

Greece will vote on July 5 on the outcome of negotiations with its international creditors that have dragged on since January, when Tsipras's Syriza party first took power on a promise of ending austerity.

As the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers held a crunch meeting in Brussels, their Dutch leader Jeroen Dijsselbloem said he was "very negatively surprised" by the Greek referendum decision.

"That is a sad decision for Greece because it has closed the door for further talks where the door was still open in my mind," Dijsselbloem said.

"We will hear from the Greek minister about whether all this is correct and then we will talk about the consequences that will have," he added.

Germany's hardline pro-austerity finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the Greek government had "ended the negotiations unilaterally."

Confusion now surrounds the state of Greek finances, with the vote coming five days after a June 30 deadline for Greece to pay the IMF 1.5 billion euros that Athens says it cannot afford without a deal.

On Friday Greece's international creditors had offered Athens a five-month, 12-billion-euro (US$13.4-billion) extension of its rescue program but said it must seal a reform deal this weekend to avoid the IMF default.

The current bailout program itself is also due to expire on June 30, meaning that the eurozone ministers must on Saturday decide whether to give Greece a few extra days to vote on it -- as well as whether to keep the five-month offer on the table at all.

The European Central Bank will now play a crucial role in ensuring Greece's banks have the cash to open on Monday, and two top Tsipras aides were meeting ECB head Mario Draghi in Brussels on Saturday.

Greece was stunned by the referendum announcement by radical leader Tsipras, which came just hours after he had been at a summit with European leaders in a bid to end the crisis.

"The people must decide free of any blackmail," the 40-year-old prime minister said in a televised address to the nation late on Friday.

"We were asked to implement austerity measures... allowing the deregulation of the labor market, pension cuts, and an increase in VAT on food products, targeting the humiliation of an entire people," Tsipras said in his address.

In Greece's second city, Thessaloniki, some banks have run out of money, according to an AFP reporter, while a National bank branch had a queue of 50 people.

"I have a shop. I came to the bank to withdraw as much money as I can in order to cover the needs of my shop for next week," 42-year-old Maria Kalpakidou told AFP.

Demand at petrol stations was also said to have "heightened" but there were no fuel shortage problems, according to state news agency ANA.

The Eurogroup will now also be discussing worst case scenarios, ranging from a Greek default next week to a possible exit from the eurozone, which would shake the European post-war project to its foundations.

"I think plan B is fast unravelling into plan A," said Finnish Finance Minister Alex Stubb. "We cannot extend the programme as it stands."

However IMF chief Christine Lagarde took a softer line than most of Europe's politicians, saying that the Washington-based lender "will continue to work" on Greece's financial survival.

Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan, whose own country recently left an EU-IMF rescue package, said he was "open to persuasions in both directions" on the possibility of a bailout extension.

The Greek government's immediate priority on Monday will to be to keep the country's banks open.

Draghi has been keeping the Greek banking system alive with near-daily cash infusions as it is frozen out of the capital markets.

Greece has had two international bailouts worth 240 billion euros since the crisis started in 2010, with five years of recession and high unemployment adding to the pain of austerity measures demanded by the EU and IMF. (ren)

Greece creditors offer five-month bailout extension 

Greece's international creditors on Friday offered Athens a five-month, 12-billion-euro (US$13.4-billion) extension of its bailout program but said it must seal a deal this weekend to avoid an IMF default next week.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Athens not to waste an "extraordinarily generous" offer that would see Greece handed vital cash until November 30 in exchange for major reforms Greece has so far resisted.

But Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he refused any take-it-or-leave-it offers from his EU partners and vowed to remain true to his anti-austerity principles despite the financial abyss looming just days away.

"Europe's principles are not based on blackmail and ultimatums," Tsipras said after a two-day EU leaders summit dominated by the Greek debt crisis. "In these crucial hours, nobody has the right to put these principles at risk."

Tsipras spoke after a short meeting with Merkel and France's Francois Hollande on the eve of a "decisive" meeting of eurozone finance ministers aimed at finding a deal to end the crisis.

The eleventh-hour offer followed a week-long series of talks to end the stand-off between the creditors and Tsipras's leftist government, which has balked at further reforms-for-cash after five years of economic hardship.

According to the proposals seen by AFP, the creditors are ready to quickly disburse 1.8 billion euros in financial aid to help Athens meet a 1.5 billion euro IMF debt repayment due on June 30 as long as the Greek parliament approves disputed reforms.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the chances for a deal stood at about "50-50".

Eurozone stock markets pushed higher on news of the new offer for Greece.

In their short meeting, Tsipras told Merkel and Hollande he could not understand their "harsh" stance and asked for leeway.

But the eurozone's two most powerful leaders insisted that Saturday's eurozone meeting was "crucial and decisive and that it was vital now to work towards a deal," a source said.

Syriza party leader Tsipras was elected in January on an anti-austerity platform and has resisted the creditors' demands for pensions cuts and VAT hikes in return for unlocking bailout funds

An extension to Greece's massive 240 billion-euro bailout to the end of November would be the third since December and allow more time for heavily indebted Athens to negotiate future financing from its European partners.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers, said a deal had to be clinched on Saturday or there would not be enough time for it to get parliamentary approval.

"Tomorrow it really has to happen, for the simple reason that it has to go through parliament, first the Greek then of several member states," the Dutch finance minister told journalists in The Hague.

The proposal by the three main creditors -- the European Commission, ECB, and International Monetary Fund -- said a "five-month extension of the current program ... would be feasible during which a total of 12 billion euros of financial support would be provided."

An immediate 1.8 billion euro disbursement -- profits from Greek bonds held by the European Central Bank -- would be paid "as soon as the Greek parliament has approved with a resolution the agreement with the (creditor) institutions and adopted a first set of legislative actions."

Later payments, including money to cover huge payments owed the ECB this summer, would come from the EU's firefighting rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, as well as cash currently dedicated to support Greece's banks.

The plan has already been sent to German parliament members who will vote on the measures if the Greek government accepts the deal on Saturday, sources said.

The IMF could also contribute to the bailout extension, but only if certain conditions are met, underscoring differences between Europe and the Washington-based lender which wants Greece's huge debt mountain to be reduced.

Greece also wants debt cut as part of a solution to the five months of bitter negotiations over the unlocking of the final 7.2 billion euro (US$8.1 billion) payout from its current extension, which expires on June 30.

The stakes could not be higher.

"Every day that passes brings us closer to the inevitable ... a form of chaos, of disorder," French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said. (ren)(+++)

Asian stocks fall on Greek standoff, China margin curbs 

Most Asian stock indexes fell Friday as a standoff between Greece and its international creditors threatened to drag into the weekend. Chinese shares led the declines as curbs on using borrowed money to buy stocks take the heat of a market boom.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 index lost 0.5 percent to 20,670.98 while South Korea's Kospi gained 0.2 percent to 2,090.73. Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 1.1 percent to 26,846.03 and the Shanghai Composite Index in mainland China slumped 3.2 percent to 4,381.86. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 shed 1.6 percent to 5,539.80.

China's equity markets, which have sizzled over the past year, are sliding as authorities, worried about a bubble move to tighten rules on margin financing, which involves using borrowed money to buy stocks. The Shanghai index, which until a few weeks ago was up 150 percent over the past 12 months, has fallen more than 7 percent this week. The market's drop may also be exacerbated by the herd mentality of retail investors, who play an outsize role in China's markets, or by margin investors being forced to sell off to meet margin calls.

"Tighter margin financing seems to have deflated the Chinese equity run as there was increasing signs of deleveraging," said Bernard Aw of IG Markets in Singapore. He said margin debt fell for a fourth day Thursday on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Global investors are watching closely as Greek debt talks go down to the wire. On Thursday, a key meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Greece's rescue package broke up without agreement, intensifying doubts about whether Athens can repay a 1.6 billion euro ($1.8 billion) debt to the International Monetary Fund due Tuesday. A new meeting is tentatively scheduled for Saturday. Creditors will not free up billions in bailout money until there's an agreement on a drastic tax and austerity reform package for the Mediterranean nation.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 0.4 percent to 17,890.36 and the Standard & Poor's 500 fell 0.3 percent to 2,102.31. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.2 percent to 5,112.19.

Benchmark U.S. crude oil fell on 7 cents to $59.63 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract dropped 57 cents to close at $59.70 a barrel in New York on Thursday. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oils used by many U.S. refineries, rose 20 cents to $63.40 in London.

The euro fell to $1.1187 from $1.1205 in the previous trading session. The dollar weakened to 123.29 yen from 123.62 yen.(ika)

Goods prices continue to rise

Goods prices continue to rise

I think politics in this country has always useless goods - expensive items kept ga ve been dressing down when the president and the government remains so well how about this supposed panya dong cheap gasoline, sugar, rice, everything is expensive versatile import from the outside people are not self-contained menebabkan rising food prices because they do not berdikarinya it, we must rajain work in order to create self-sufficiency which Continual and does not rely on foreign and economic crisis

J Trust Indonesia to float more public shares

J Trust Indonesia to float more public shares

Private lender J Trust Indonesia, formerly known as Bank Mutiara, is preparing to release more shares to the public within two years to comply with an existing bourse regulation.

J Trust Indonesia president director Ahmad Fajar said that the bank would gradually float its shares to meet the 7.5 percent “free-float shares” requirement set by the Indonesia Stock Exchange

(IDX).

“The gradual increase of public ownership reflects our commitment to remain a publicly listed company,” he said on Tuesday after the bank’s annual general shareholders’ meeting.

J Trust Indonesia has never been delisted from the bourse and its shares are still listed under the “BCIC” code, even though trading of the shares has been suspended since 2009, when the bank — at the time named Bank Century — was bailed out by the government.

The bourse’s 7.5 percent free-float shares requirement was put in place in January 2014 and all publicly listed firms are given two years until 2016 to adjust to it.

“However, we have asked to be given two years from the time the bank was acquired by J Trust to adjust to the requirement,” Fajar added.

The bank was acquired by Japanese holding company J Trust Co. Ltd. in November 2014, following a lengthy auction that was conducted by the Deposit Insurance Corporation (LPS).

It means that J Trust Indonesia has until November 2016 to fulfill the requirement and increase its public stake from the current 0.003 percent. J Trust Co. itself had 99.0697 percent of the shares in the bank as of May, while the LPS held 0.9273 percent shares.

However, shareholders during the meeting approved a divestment of 1 percent of J Trust Co.’s stake to PT J Trust Investment Indonesia, the bank’s sister company, reducing the former’s ownership to 98.0697 percent.

Meanwhile, Fajar said that J Trust Indonesia was still optimistic about its business growth projections this year, amid a cooling economy. The bank aims at booking 17 percent growth in credit, bringing the overall figure to Rp 9.18 trillion (US$689.23 million) by year-end.

Small and medium enterprises (SME), according to Fajar, will remain its preferred business segment, as it hopes to see SMEs to account for 20 percent of its total lending in several years.

“The rest will be made up by consumer and commercial segments,” Fajar said.

JTrust Indonesia also looks to increase its core capital and jack up its status within the next few years, as parent company J Trust Co. is already committed to inject fresh funds every year, according to Fajar.

The bank, as revealed by its March financial statement, had Rp 1.29 trillion in core capital, making it a BUKU II lender, whose core capital reaches Rp 1 trillion to Rp 5 trillion.

Ever since the takeover in 2014, J Trust Co. had injected Rp 600 billion worth of additional capital into JTrust Indonesia. 

“There will be additional capital injection again, but we are still discussing that,” Fajar added.

He confirmed that J Trust Co. was ready to contribute around Rp 1 trillion to Rp 2 trillion to diversify the bank’s funding options, either in time deposits, medium-term notes or negotiable certificates of deposit (NCD).

Twitter says it wants full-time CEO

Twitter says it wants full-time CEO

Twitter said Monday it would only consider chief executive candidates who can commit full-time to the company, signaling that co-founder and interim head Jack Dorsey likely will not be picked.

Dorsey, in addition to stepping in for outgoing Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, leads Square, a growing mobile payments company.

"The Committee will only consider candidates for recommendation to the full Board who are in a position to make a full-time commitment to Twitter," the messaging-platform company said.

"The search is proceeding with a sense of urgency but the Committee will take the time necessary to find the right CEO to lead the next phase of Twitter's growth."

Twitter said it had hired the executive search firm Spencer Stuart to help identify CEO candidates. Costolo announced June 11 he was stepping down amid criticism of the social media company's slowing growth.

Some analysts had speculated that Dorsey, the author of the first "Tweet," might try to lead both Twitter and Square. But Twitter's statement was seen as pressuring Dorsey, who is Twitter's chairman, to make a choice between the two companies.

In mid-morning, trade, Twitter shares fell 0.6 percent to $35.64. (iik)

Telkom defends itself over data center issue

State-run telecommunications giant PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom) clarified on Saturday that its new data centers in Singapore were built for global corporate clients, brushing off suspicions that the technology was used to host Indonesia’s secret data.

Telkom's vice president of corporate communications, Arif Prabowo, explained that the currently under-construction data center, dubbed Telin-3, and his firm’s other two existing data centers in the city-state were not meant for Indonesia's e-government system.

"Telin-3 and the other two data centers built in Singapore are only targeting Singaporean companies and multinational companies based in Singapore," he said in a statement.

He explained that Telkom used its Indonesia-based data centers to serve its government clients.

Telkom runs its data center business in Indonesia through its subsidiary PT Telkomsigma, which currently operates three data centers in Serpong, Surabaya and Sentul.

Telkomsigma is also now building a new data center in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan.

Sukamta, a member of the House of Representatives with the Prosperous Justice Pasty (PKS), previously questioned Telkom's decision to build a new US$115 million data center in the neighboring country through its subsidiary Telin Singapore.

Telin Singtel was established in 2007, with Telkom controlling 100 percent of the company through its Jakarta-based PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (Telin).

Telin-3, which is based in Jurong and is scheduled to start operating in the third quarter next year, will be Telin Singapore's third data center after those in Changi and Tai Seng.