Joint bank test

    REGULATORS from the United States and the United Kingdom will get together in a war room next week to see if they can cope with any possible fall-out when the next big bank topples over, the two countries said Friday.

    U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne today will run the first-ever joint exercise simulating how they would prop up a large bank operating in both countries that has landed in trouble.

    U.S. tax deal

    THE U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking “total cooperation” from Swiss banks in a draft agreement aimed at allowing the banks to make amends for aiding tax evasion by wealthy Americans, a Swiss newspaper reported Saturday.

    About 100 Swiss banks signed up to work with U.S. authorities at the end of last year in a program brokered by the Swiss Government. That followed criminal investigations of roughly a dozen Swiss banks in the United States. Under the program so-called category two banks — those that have reason to believe they may have committed tax offences — will escape prosecution if they detail their wrongdoing with U.S. clients and pay fines.

    Oil assets

    VENEZUELA will end up paying less than US$1 billion to Exxon Mobil Corp. for oil assets nationalized in 2007, after World Bank tribunal award, the Venezuelan Government said Friday.

    Venezuela said it will deduct a previous award made against it by another international tribunal, the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce, from Thursday’s US$1.6 billion ruling by the World Bank. The case relates to the 2007 takeover of a large heavy crude project in the Orinoco region by then president Hugo Chavez’s government.