BANKING - Global bank hub SWIFT ready to cut off Iran

www.cbsnews.com - BRUSSELS - An international banking clearinghouse crucial to Iran's oil sales said Friday that it is preparing to discontinue services to Iranian financial institutions, an unprecedented and potentially devastating blow to Tehran as the West ramps up a campaign to stop its nuclear program.
The statement by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as SWIFT, suggests that the European Union — under pressure from Washington — is close to approving regulations that will require the Brussels-based hub to evict Iranian institutions from its ranks. (source)

FINANCE - Turkish Bank in Spotlight for Iran Deals as Sanctions Tighten

www.wsj.com - ISTANBUL—Amid tightening U.S. and European Union sanctions against Iran, almost all of Turkey's banks have stopped handling trade deals with the Islamic Republic, leaving one Turkish lender to rake in all that business: state-owned Halkbank.

Washington passed sanctions in January threatening to penalize financial institutions dealing with Iran's central bank, forcing Turkey's private lenders to halt transactions with Tehran for fear of being frozen out of international markets. U.S. Treasury officials visited Turkey several times last year to advise financial institutions that doing business with proscribed Iranian entities runs the risk of being frozen out of the U.S. financial system. (source)

FINANCE - OIC - Turkey's Halkbank to handle Iran payments so long as legal

www.todayszaman.com - Turkish lender Halkbank will continue to handle customers' oil payments to Iran as long as they comply with international regulations, the bank's general manager said in the wake of fresh, unilateral US and EU sanctions.

Halkbank's dealings with Iran drew attention last year when Indian refiners disclosed they were channeling oil payments through the Turkish bank as their own central bank had shut its payment facility, fearing US retribution.

Majority state-owned Halkbank is Turkey's sixth largest bank, based on unconsolidated assets, and has a representative office in Tehran. (source)

FINANCE - OIC - Turkey to follow only UN sanctions against Iran

www.worldbulletin.net - Turkey’s largest oil refinery in Tüpraş relies on Iranian crude oil, and has been refreshing agreements with Iran for decades.  - Diplomatic sources have announced that Ankara will not be affected by the new set of sanctions on Iran, announced by the EU to cut all imports of Iranian crude oil to the EU bloc, on the grounds that Turkey will follow only UN-led sanctions.

“Turkey in principle feels bound only by UN Security Council sanctions against third countries,” diplomatic sources told Cihan on Monday, shortly after the EU governments agreed that they would ban all new contracts to purchase oil from Tehran. (source)

FINANCE - Turkey says not bound by US sanctions against Iran

Turkey, a US ally that relies on Iranian oil and gas imports, signaled Thursday it will not comply with American sanctions against Iran regarding its nuclear program.

Turkey indicated that it will only enforce sanctions that have been approved by the United Nations, and its announcement is a setback to US sanctions aimed at halting what Western governments say is Iran's effort to develop nuclear weapons. (source)

BANKING - Iran dealings put Turkey's Halkbank in spotlight

ISTANBUL, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Turkish lender Halkbank , little known outside Turkey, has gained a reputation in the oil market over the past 18 months for handling transactions that other banks fear to touch - trade deals with Iran.

Now a new law signed by President Barack Obama last Saturday, which imposes U.S. sanctions on financial institutions dealing with Iran's central bank, has put the bank squarely in the spotlight. (source)

ARTICLES - Deconstructing The International Business Cycle: Why Does A U.S. Sneeze Give The Rest Of The World A Cold?

Summary: The 2008 crisis underscored the interconnectedness of the international business cycle, with U.S. shocks leading to the largest global slowdown since the 1930s. We estimate spillover effects across major advanced country regions in a structural VAR (SVAR) using pre-crisis data. Our new method freely estimates the contemporaneous correlation matrix for underlying shocks in the VAR and (uniquely, to our knowledge) the associated uncertainty. Our results suggest that the international business cycle is largely driven by U.S. financial shocks with a significant impact from global shocks, mainly reflecting commodity prices. Other advanced economic regions play a much smaller and regional role in growth spillovers. Our findings are consistent with the emerging evidence on the current crisis.

GENERAL - Transatlantic survey shows Turks choosing to cooperate with Mideast

According to the 2010 Transatlantic Trends public opinion survey released yesterday by the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), the percentage of Turks who said Turkey should act in closest cooperation with countries in the Middle East on international matters has doubled to 20 percent from 2009 figures. Furthermore, the majority of Turks were not concerned about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, in sharp contrast with the European Union and the United States respondents, who were concerned.