Munich Re Reserve Risk Financing, Inc, a subsidiary of Munich Re, has announced that it has managed to raise securitized financing worth $200 million. The money was raised with the American company Diversified Gas & Oil PLC.

Diversified are an owner and operator of oil wells, natural gas, and other associated assets. Munich Re has entirely funded the deal, and additionally, it also provided the required commodity price hedges that were vital to the deal.

The Munich Re Reserve Bank Financing President George Carrick spoke about the financing deal. He said,

“A financing of this type requires a combination of operator capability and quality long-lived reserves. DGOC, an efficient consolidator and operator of long-lived producing natural gas reserves, was uniquely positioned to avail itself of this structure.”

He added that Munich Re is pleased to have partnered with an innovative company like Diversified. On the other hand, this collaboration marks Diversified Gas & Oil’s first foray into securitized financing. In this regard, it should be noted that the company’s notes have been assigned BBB rating by well-known rating agencies Morningstar and Fitch.

Recently, Amazon announced Day One Fund to prevent and minimize homelessness in which Albuquerque, a local non-profit, was listed and got a significant fund of $2.5 million as an award.

Amazon’s Founder & CEO, Jeff Bezos, announced the Day One Fund of $98.5 million to give to the 32 recipients across 23 states, including Albuquerque. According to the non-profit, this huge amount can help in providing shelter to 100 families who are facing homelessness in Albuquerque every year. Last year, the total funds of amount $97.5 million were awarded to 24 organizations.

Jeff Bezos also twitted that he is happy to announce the Bezos Day One Grants of the 2019 year. He thanked 32 organizations for preventing homelessness in 23 states.

Mary’s Place, based in Seattle, is one of the non-profit recipients who got $5 million of funds. It helps homeless women and children. Amazon is providing a big space in its new office towers as a homeless shelter.

The funds are not only provided to the organizations for shelters but also for creating a network of high-quality and full-scholarship pre-schools in underserved communities.

The total fund of $98.5 million has been distributed among 32 organizations appropriately.

In a major achievement for Kakao, South Korean Internet Company is on the path of becoming the largest shareholder of its internet-only bank on Friday. With this achievement, it will emerge as the first non-financial services company to gain majority stake in South Korean lender.

Earlier on Wednesday, Financial Services Commission gave a green signal to Korean Investment Holdings’ plea to transfer nearly 15% and 29% of its present 50% stake in Kakao Bank to Kakao and Korean Investment Value Asset Management.

Kakao has gained a reputation as a renowned South Korean Internet company. It came into existence in the year 2010. It was established soon after a merger between Daum Communication and Kakao. Its name was changed to Daum Kakao in 2015 only to be reverted back to the original name Kakao.

Meanwhile, the deals are estimated at a joined 489.5 billion Won or $149.3 million.

Now beginning Friday, Kakao will gain a 34% share in the internet-only bank while the Korea Investment Value Asset Management is set to gain 29% stake thus making it Kakao Bank’s second-largest shareholder. This change will bring down Korea Investment Holding’s share in the internet-only bank to 5% minus one share.

Things were not as rosy for Kakao as it came across several obstacles in its struggle to become the largest shareholder since April. Earlier this year in April, it had first applied to the FSC for significant reviews. FSC had started the procedure of giving reviews only to put them on hold later on as a result of some charged leveled against Kakao Chairman, Kim Beom-Su’s violations of unbiased trade regulations.

The coalition government of Japan will be injecting the economy with a fresh boost of $92 billion budget to support the sluggish economic growth. The decision was taken in a meeting attended by all the senior officials of the government on Wednesday. This underscores the growing concern among policymakers about the weak economic outlook due to a hike in sales tax and declining global demand.

Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, on Wednesday, stated at a press conference that

Prime Minister (Shinzo) Abe told us to compile a sizable package to take all possible steps on the economy. We want to craft a strong economic package, taking into account the economic situation, global economy, and damage caused by typhoons, which were larger than last year, so as to get the economy on a solid growth path.

The ruling party appealed to focus the spending on disaster relief that was caused due to a string of hurricanes that hit Japan this year and provide funds to aid farmers to cope with the fallout of the US-Japan trade deal, which opens up a few market segments for US goods. Abe also ordered to disburse stimulus to support the economy after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Analysts are doubtful about the Abe government’s ability to push that big amount into the economy when government debt is twice that of its $5 trillion economy. Also, with an aging population and the strictest labor laws, the infrastructure spending programs will face serious problems in terms of implementation.

During the current fiscal year, which ends in March 2020, the government will be giving out a supplementary budget and it will also be planning out for the next fiscal year’s budget plan in December. This will allow the government a period of 15-months to disburse the funds. Supplementary budgets to the magnitude of above 10 trillion yen have been compiled only four times in the past. Both the budget drafts will take effect only after the approval of the parliament.

South Korea Ministry of trade, in a statement, announced today that it is planning to hit free-trade pacts in 12 more nations by 2022. This will enable it to broaden its existence over 90% of the global gross domestic product along with its FTAs.

The Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hee attended a meeting with representatives from trade-related organizations. During the meeting, he said,

Amid growing protectionism around the globe, and growing tension between the United States and China, South Korea will focus efforts on penetrating into new markets.

Earlier this month, South Korea inked the RCEP, paving the way for stable trade with an economic bloc that accounts for a third of the global economy,

Yoo said.

RCEP stands for the  Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership involving Southeast Asian Nations bloc’s 10-member Association along with the dialogue partners. It is expected of South Korea to broaden its ties to Southeast countries of Asia via its impending summit with ASEAN scheduled for the month, according to a statement by the minister.

South Korea is Asia’s 4th largest country by the economy, and as reported this November, it has enforced 18 batches of FTA’s already with 58 nations. It thereafter announced its plans to widen the network, making it cover 70 countries in total by 2022 end.

Following the completion of these pacts, South Korea will celebrate an unrestricted trade network covering approximately 90% of the combined global GDP.

The trade minister, Yoo, underlined that these actions are required to withstand the growing skepticism in the business settings worldwide due to the long-standing Chinese-American trade war. The two countries are responsible for around 40% of the exports of South Korea.

Recently, a leading corporate for providing travel data aggregation and technology solutions, Traxo announced that a new investor, Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), had joined the company. ARC invested in supporting the growth of the company’s sales and marketing teams.

Traxo is a Texas-based travel data capture and intelligence solution provider across the world. Traxo allows travel managers as well as Travel Management Companies (TMCs) to track the total amount spent on travel. The API integration helps Traxo to share the same travel data with other corporate travel companies.

On the other hand, ARC is a leading air travel data distributer. It helps travel communities across the world to connect, grow, and thrive. According to the reports, ARC spent $94.8 billion in transactions between airlines and travel agencies, and the company represented over 295 million passenger trips.

The CEO and founder of Traxo, Andres Fabris, said that the main aim of Traxo is to authorize the travel ecosystem to make the data error-free. It smoothens the travel for travelers and suppliers, corporate travel teams and groups, and travel service providers at any time zone. He continued that ARC is a new partner of Traxo and shaping this mission differently. The unparalleled insights by ARC are a need of the corporate travel industry.

The CEO and President of ARC, Mike Premo, said that ARC would provide omnichannel retailing solutions that will help airlines, TMCs, travel agencies, and companies to do the business together. ARC is dedicated to Traxo in improving the corporate travel in every channel.

Now, Traxo has appointed two members in the board of directors that are Sam Gilliland, CEO and former chairman of Sabre Corporation and Lauri Reishus, COO and EVP of ARC to support the company in the travel industry. Fabris said that both Sam and Lauri had brought deep domain experience to the team. Traxo is trying to fill the gap in providing the incredible corporate travel experience for several stakeholders.

The National Australia Bank (NAB) has agreed to pay $49.5M to settle a class-action lawsuit brought against it on behalf of tens of thousands of customers to whom it sold junk credit card and personal life insurance.

The amount to be paid to each customer has not been decided yet, but the court has that by Christmas, each consumer should be notified about whether they are eligible for a payout or not.

The law firm Slater and Gordon, which filed the suit alleged that NAB and its subsidiary MLC Limited misled people with false information to sell consumer credit insurance (CCI). As a result of this, people who were least likely to avails of consumer credit insurance, like pensioners, unemployed people, critically ill patients, and casual workers, bought it.

CCI products are designed to guard against default over loan or credit card payments. The unemployed, the critically ill, and pensioners hardly qualify for any loan, be it for a car or a house or even a credit card. They just about manage the bare minimum wages to survive; the chances of them splurging money through their credit cards are non-existent. When a group of people does not qualify for obtaining a loan or a credit card, selling insurance to them over defaulting on a credit card or loan repayments makes no sense.

CCI policies offer insurance in case someone is ill or loses his job and is unable to pay monthly installments of car or home loan or credit card payments. The customer’s payments will be covered by his CCI insurer.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) scrutinized CCI services (including mortgages and personal loans) provided by 11 biggest banks, including Westpac, ANZ, and Commonwealth Bank.

In its report published in July this year, the ASIC concluded that, on average, customers received only 11 cents per dollar invested in Consumer Credit Insurance products linked to their credit cards.

In November, the banking royal commission criticized the cold selling of CCI products.