Despite strong performance by the Banking major, stocks of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (NYSE:RBS) weakened a bit. The decline in the stock prices of the Royal Bank of Scotland might have to do something with news regarding the recent takeover bid by Pakistan’s Faysal Bank (KAR:FABL) to takeover Royal Bank of Scotland’s Pakistan Operations.

Pakistan’s Faysal Bank won the bid to takeover the Royal Bank of Scotland’s local operations in Pakistan and allows Pakistan’s lending company Faysal to expand its retail presence in the area. The purchase of RBS assets in Pakistan means that Faysal will be doubling up its branch base and will be able to grow its business in Pakistan.

The recent takeover bid for RBS local branches in Pakistan has recently got its approval from the Pakistan Central Bank. RBS is in a move to ramp up its business by selling up non-core operations and has recently hired bankers to boost its Asian Equities business.

Share prices of many banking and financial firms went up as the stress report on european banks suggested that most of the banks were healthy and with UBS and Deutsche Bank reporting heavy profits for the second quarter of the year. Santander Bank share prices also went up as news regarding the positive report on bank stress results came out.

Also there is being speculation that Santander bank might takeover National Australia Bank Clydesdale and Yorkshire banking arms. Surprisingly out of seven banks that failed the stress tests, five were located in Spain. However Santander Banking Group which also has its headquarters in Spain was not only just able to pass the stress tests but also has been one of the strongest emerging banking company at the moment.

The company is already considering a flotation of its UK banking operations that is expected to raise billions of pounds for the company. Santander (NYSE:STD) was recently reported to bid for RBS branches in order to diversify its business.

As European financial firms UBS and Deutsche Bank announced their quarterly earnings for the second quarter of the year 2010, share prices of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc (NYSE:RBS) went up. Stocks of the Royal Bank of Scotland had also shown decent gains after the ONS report estimated that the country’s economy had grown more than what had been expected by analysts.

Shares of Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc (RBS) were also up at the London Stock Exchange (LON:RBS) and were heavily boosted by the report regarding the gains in net profits of European banking firms.

The rise in the stock prices of the European Banking Firm RBS is also being attributed to the announcement of the company passing the bank stress test results. As per the stress test results, none of the british banking companies have failed the stress tests.  Some analysts have put that the stress tests were not strict enough but the news of the british banking firms passing the tests has been an overall good news.

Deutsche Bank Share Prices (NYSE:DB) went up as the company reported profits for the second quarter of the year. According to the report, the banking firm was successfully able to have a net income of more than a billion euros. The companies success for the quarter is being attributed to the growth in the retail and transaction banking which was able to offest the decline in sales and trading. Also the rise in business confidence in Germany played an important role in the growth of the banking firm.

Many analysts had expected the companies profits to be far less than that. The Deutsche Bank was not the only European financial firm that reported profits – UBS which is one of the largest financial service providers also reported heavy profits for its second quarter results.

Both UBS (NYSE:UBS) and Deutsche Bank (ETR:DBK) had been badly affected due to the economic crisis in 2008 however it is being expected that both companies will be show healthy growth during the year.

Stock prices of one of the largest financial firms UBS went up as it announced that the firm had not only just reported profits but had been successfully able to beat analysts expectations on its growth.

Many of the European banks had been in trouble after the American Economy was expected to be in recession, that caused many financial firms to report heavy losses. The financial firm UBS had been hit with credit crisis and tax probe in 2008, the time when it started to report a loss in its assets.

Even though the revenues of the company have fallen, the company has been successfully able to report heavy profits during its second quarter. UBS reported that it had a profit of more than 2 billion swiss francs.

The company’s stocks (NYSE:UBS) have been showing decent gains during the month. The company claims it will be able to stop client outflows this year. The company expects that it will be able to gain back its share in the financial arena.

BP Share Price went down just a day after the Company’s CEO Tony Hayward announced that he will be stepping down. Even though there had been an early positive trend in the share price because of the heavily criticised CEO stepping down and company being successfully able to plug the leak – the shares went down, after the company reported heavy losses in its business. Many had expected that the company will be reporting profit for the year despite the problems the company had faced due to the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

BP reported losses in its quarterly results, The company has reported losses in billions of dollars for the second quarter. The company had previously reported a huge profit in the previous year.

Many stockholders believe that the prices of the company’s share are under their original value because of the crisis. Though this might be true to a certain extent but due to big losses the company has reported in the quarter it will take the company a long time in order to recover.

BP’s CEO Tony Hayward will be stepping down from his position in October. The CEO had been heavily criticised for his handling of the company’s crisis during the spill and foolish errors in public relations.

The company’s ceo has been criticised for the Gulf Oil Spill which has become one of the worst environment disaster for the World and which has affected the American coastal economy.

Despite the oil crisis that the company has faced, it is being estimated the company has made billions of dollars in profits for the year 2010. Beyond Petroleum Plc has already spent billions of dollars for the oil spill cleanup.

According to me if the company reports profits for this year, then it might face more burden by the American Government and public in the post-disaster situation. This is because if the company will not be making a profit then it does not has anything to give, but if it makes a profit then some people will try to make “bogus” claims in order to monetise from the situation.

Share Prices of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc (NYSE:RBS) made significant gains in the previous week after a report published by the Office for National Stastics for the second quarter showed growth in the GDP of the country.

According to the report by Office for National Stastics it has been estimated that the GDP growth for the second quarter was around 1.1 percent which is higher than what the analysts had expected. The report claims that there has been growth in the service, distribution, hotel, restaurant, transport, business, finance, construction, electricity, agriculture, gas, water, forestry, fishing, manufacturing and government sectors. Only transport, storage and communication sectors had a decrease compared to the previous quarter of the year.

The UK economy had a slump in the year 2009 and the government was criticised on how it was handling the budget.

The report comes as a relief to the people who had been expecting the economy to get back on track.

The country’s capital will soon be in panic mode as it only has a limited amount of time before the games (Its from October of this year!!). Reports regarding the status of infrastructure developments for the 2010 Games are coming up and they do not look good.

One of them is the delay in village towers which the company that has been handed the project blames on a shortage of manpower. I find it ridiculous that even though the country has surplus of unemployed men looking for a job, the company “ITDC” manages to claim that they are not able to find enough people for the work to be done.

The games might just end up being a headache for the Government. It is no doubt that the Government will blame the 2010 Games for not focussing on other things in the country that it is responsible for.

Perhaps the Government should have some kind of rating or grading system where it reviews the history of the company before handling them projects that could damage the reputation of the country.

The Indian Government had to have a contest to decide which symbol will be made the face for the Indian Rupee. I had always thought that the rupee already had a symbol – Rs but anways the contest is now over and the final symbol is letter from the devanagari script.

There is also a hidden meaning in the symbol which no one can ever guess except the creator (trying to sell you out??). The symbol is actually referring to the tricolour Indian flag and also depicts equality sign which symbolizes the nation’s desire to reduce economic disparity.

The aim of the currency is also to separate the identity of the nation’s currency from fellow countries – Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka who also use different rupees.