FRIDAY, 11.00AM:
RETAIL group Pick ‘n Pay’s new financial services division on Thursday game out fighting in its drive to attract savings deposits by announcing it will hold interest rates on deposits in the face of cuts by commercial banks following last weekend’s cut in the Bank Rate.
Mincing no words, division MD Nicky Bicket said: “The rates offered by the banks on instant access credit balances are already contemptuous and , despite this, we know that at least two of the major banks have already dropped their rates on savings deposits.”
Bicket said his company will hold deposit rates at least until the end of September, “if we drop them at all”, adding it is the division’s policy to hold interest rates as long as possible when the rest of the market is dropping.
BUSINESS BRIEFS
FNB FIRST ON EUROBOND FIRST National Bank on Thursday became the first private sector South African company to raise funds in eurorands. The European Investment Bank advanced FNB R80-million over 10 years from its recent R100-million eurorand bond issue.
FLOTEL PLAN SINKING PLANS by UK-based Don Robinson group to convert the Canberra cruise liner into a floating hotel anchored in Durban harbour fell overboard on Thursday with the discovery that the ship has been sold to a Pakistani scrapyard. Don Robinson’s local representative Alec Vituli said the group’s agents in Pakistan are trying to buy Canberra back. He added that the group has been offered another liner if the Canberra deal falls through.
NEDBANK IN MAURITIUS THE Mauritian Central Bank on Thursday approved Nedbank’s acquisition of of 20,1% of the share capital of the State Bank of Mauritius, one of the Indian Ocean island republic’s leading commercial banks.