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Economy

European Banks Bark Back After Moody's Downgrades, Markets Steady

Worldcrunch

LES ECHOS (France), LE TEMPS (Switzerland), BLOOMBERG

PARIS - The Moody's ratings agency's downgrading of 15 top Western banks reverberated in world financial capitals Friday, though markets held relatively steady in both Asia and Europe.

The announcement, made late on Thursday, sparked reactions Friday morning from top bank managers and analysts in Europe. One of several French banks affected, BNP Paribas complained that Moody's didn't "sufficiently take into consideration" its deleveraging plan currently underway, French business daily Les Echos reported.

Still markets, including bank shares, were largely unaffected, as investors had been anticipating such a move for several months. Pending downgrades had already weighed on banks since Moody's announced a review in February of 17 top banks. "Pressure mounted as Europe's sovereign-debt crisis intensified and cast doubt on the health of some of the continent's lenders," Bloomberg reports.

The downgrades affected such US banking giants as Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp and Citigroup. Swiss bank Credit Suisse took the steepest hit, a three-notch downgrade. "Moody's announcement will have no material influence on neither the liquidity nor the financial planning of the bank," Credit Suisse spokesman Marc Dosch was quoted as saying in Geneva daily Le Temps.

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Society

Iran's Use Of Death Penalty Has Doubled, Targeting Protesters And Ethnic Minorities

Without drawing attention to public executions like it did last year, the regime has quietly continued to mete out capital punishment: increasing both death sentences and the carrying out of executions, on pace in 2023 to double from the previous year.

Photo of clashes between ​Iranian police and protestors on Tehran's Keshavrz Boulevard on Sept. 2022

Iranian protestors on Tehran's Keshavrz Boulevard on Sept. 2022

Ahmad Rafat

The tribunals of the Islamic Republic of Iran have accelerated the churning out of their specialty: death sentences. The latest were issued in the southwestern city of Ahwaz for six members of the local Arab minority and suspected separatists.

The defendants, named as Ali Majdam, Muhammad Reza Muqaddam, Moin Khanfari, Habib Deris, Adnan Gheibshahi and Salem Musawi, had been charged with terrorist activities in the Khuzestan province, in the southwest of the country, in the years 2018-2020, and may have been members of an Arab separatist group, the Harakat al-nidhal.

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