Business Leap Frontier

Emerging economic tiger China has revealed some plans for south-east Asian countries. The plans for establishing a $10bn investment fund. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao announced the plans recently. Actually the planned to come to pass at Thailand’s ASEAN conference (cancelled).

That new agreement is projected to get the world’s largest free trade area. It covers just about two-billion citizens of different countries. The plans have also been designed for cooperation on some issues like:

1. Construction of infrastructure
2. Energy
3. Resources
4. Information
5. Communication

Over the upcoming three to five years, the country will offer more than $15billion in credit in South-East Asia for cooperation. Among the South-East countries at first Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar will get emergency funds.

The founder of Microsoft Corp, Bill Gates has regained his spot at the list of the richest man in the world, again. Gates has overtaken investor Warren Buffett, as the global financial meltdown wiped out $2 trillion from the net worth of the world’s billionaires, Forbes Magazine said on Wednesday.

This year, the number of billionaires in the world fell by nearly a third to 793 in the past year, with large numbers dropping off the list in Russia, India and Turkey.

Bill Gates regained his title as the richest man in the world, with $40 billion after triping to third last year when he was worth $58 billion. Buffett, last year’s richest man, fell to second place with $37 billion, down from $62 billion. Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim took third place with $35 billion, down from $60 billion.

Overall, the top three billionaires lost $68 billion in the year to February 13, when Forbes took a snapshot of wealth around the world to bring together its annual list of billionaires.

The Chief Executive of Forbes Magazines Steve Forbes said that, while few would shed a tear for the difficulty of a billionaire, it was bad for the economy when entrepreneurs were in trouble. He told the reporters,

Billionaires don’t have to worry about their next meal, but if their wealth is declining and you’re not creating numerous new billionaires, it means the rest of the world is not doing very well.

and added that

“The typical billionaire is down at least one third on their net worth.”

UBS bank in Switzerland recently has refused to provide the names of any more US clients to the American government. It is a diversified worldwide financial services company. The bank is the world’s largest manager of private wealth assets. Its main headquarter situated in Basel and Zurich. The authority say as UBS has accepted responsibility for helping thousands of US citizens hide assets; so, the secret accounts with the bank will be maintained. The bank has a major presence in the USA, with its US headquarters located in New York City.

UBS officials told the US administration that the bank has done every thing it can for now, without breaking Swiss criminal laws. They say they have taken corrective measures to comply with world authorities. Already the Internal Revenue Service in the USA has been handed the names of around 300 UBS clients, but the IRS still wants the identities of as many as 52,000 wealthy US citizens.

Bankrate.com said the average annual interest rates charged on various kinds of most popular credit cards went up previous week. The average APR (annual percentage rate) rose 11.52%, from 11.43% last week for the low-interest cards. The cards have rates lower than the national average but are over and over again offered merely to users with strong credit histories. On the other hand, for balance transfer cards, the average APR edged up to 13.05%, from 12.93% the week before. The cards allow customers to consolidate outstanding debt from one or more cards though sometimes they include a low introductory rate.

The average APR for cash back cards was slightly higher, at 13.67%, from 13.64% just one week ago. It is feature cash or other reward incentives. It usually requires a good-to-excellent credit rating for approval. The average APR charged for every variable-rate cards tracked by Bank-rate held steady for the third consecutive week at 10.74%. Bank-rate surveys the ten largest banks and thrifts in the ten different largest markets in America to determine its averages.