Tehran’s top banker looks to the future
Iran’s private sector gets a new lease of life
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| Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (l), and his minister of finance, Davood Danesh Jafari still have plenty of willing partners |
IS TEHRAN LOSING friends in the international banking community? The US would certainly like to think so, and will have taken heart in recent months from the decisions announced by a number of global players to bring down the curtain on their Iran-related business. Two – UBS and ABN Amro – have received wrist-slapping fines in recent years from US regulators for currency violations involving Iran. A third, Credit Suisse, made no reference to political pressures of any kind when it announced in January that it would be entering into no new business with clients in Iran or Syria. Washington will no doubt have been delighted with that moratorium – which for good measure was also extended to North Korea – although Credit Suisse said at the time that its decision was based on the perceived unattractiveness of its Iranian business.