The FINANCIAL – Fitch ratings has affirmed the Long-term Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) and Viability Ratings (VRs) of Bank of Georgia (BoG), TBC Bank (TBC), ProCredit Bank (Georgia) (PCBG) and JSC Liberty Bank (LB). The Outlooks on the banks' Long-term IDRs are Stable.

The FINANCIAL -- For the first time ever, Georgian companies made their debut at the IPO Summit Warsaw 2013 with prospects of being listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. TBC Bank responded to the call of the WSE and intends to be listed on it by 2014-2015.

The  FINANCIAL -- Each German citizen pays around EUR 150 per year to keep the cash system running, according to the findings on the ‘Cost of Cash’ by the Research Center for Financial Services at Steinbeis University.

The FINANCIAL --  70% of South Africans are planning to either save ‘the same or more’ over the coming six months, according to MasterCard Survey of Consumer Purchasing Priorities. This is a decrease from the 92% who said the same thing in the previous survey, according to MasterCard .

The FINANCIAL -- Barclays cleared the industry’s first single-name credit default swap (CDS) client transactions for two buy-side clients, according to Barclays, a major global financial services provider.