Islami Bank Bangladesh PLC has decided to form a subsidiary to provide mobile financial services (MFS).

The decision was taken at a meeting of the bank's board of directors today (22 January), held at its boardroom, subject to the completion of all regulatory formalities.

As per the decision, the authorised capital of the proposed subsidiary will be Tk1,000 crore, while the initial paid-up capital will be Tk50 crore. The paid-up capital will be increased gradually in line with investment requirements.

According to a price-sensitive disclosure, Islami Bank will hold at least 51% of the shares of the subsidiary, while the remaining shares may be offered to strategic investors in accordance with Bangladesh Bank's MFS guidelines.

Md. Omar Faruk Khan, managing director of Islami Bank, said, "The bank has decided to launch a Mobile Financial Service (MFS), and the necessary documents are being prepared for submission to the central bank."

According to the bank's website, Islami Bank currently operates its own MFS platform, mCash, which was launched in December 2012.

Through mobile phones, mCash offers services including cash deposits and withdrawals, fund transfer from one account to another, receiving remittance from abroad, checking account balance and mini-statement, giving and receiving salary, mobile recharge and payment of utility bill, merchant bill payment.

According to the bank's unaudited consolidated financial statements, Islami Bank reported a profit of Tk99.77 crore in the first nine months of 2025 (January–September), down from Tk267.72 crore in the same period of 2024. In 2024, the bank posted a net profit of Tk10,878 crore, a significant decline from Tk635.33 crore, and did not pay any dividends to shareholders.

The United States officially left the World Health Organization on Thursday (22 January) after a year of warnings that doing so would hurt public health in the US and globally, saying its decision reflected failures in the UN health agency's management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Donald Trump gave notice that the US would quit the organization on the first day of his presidency in 2025, via an executive order. According to a press release from the US Health and State Departments, the US will only work with the WHO in a limited fashion in order to effectuate the withdrawal.

"We have no plans to participate as an observer, and we have no plans of rejoining," a senior government health official said. The US said it plans to work directly with other countries - rather than through an international organization - on disease surveillance and other public health priorities.

Dispute over us-owed fees

Under US law, it was supposed to give one-year notice and pay all outstanding fees - around $260 million - before departing.

But a US State Department official disputed that the statute contains a condition that any payment needs to be made before withdrawal. "The American people have paid more than enough," a State Department spokesperson said in an email earlier on Thursday (22 January).

The Department of Health and Human Services said in a document released on Thursday (22 January) that the government had ended its funding contributions to the agency. Trump had exercised his authority to pause the future transfer of any US government resources to the WHO because the organization had cost the US trillions of dollars, the HHS spokesperson said.

The US flag had been removed from outside the WHO headquarters in Geneva on Thursday (22 January), according to witnesses.

In recent weeks, the US has moved to exit a number of other United Nations organizations, and some fear that Trump's recently launched Board of Peace could undermine the UN as a whole.

Several WHO critics have also proposed setting up a new agency to replace the organization, although a proposal document reviewed by the Trump administration last year instead suggested the US push for reforms and American leadership at WHO.

Quick return unlikely

Over the last year, many global health experts have urged a rethink, including most recently WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The WHO also said the US has not yet paid the fees it owes for 2024 and 2025. Member states are set to discuss the US departure and how it will be handled at the WHO's executive board in February, a WHO spokesperson said.

"This is a clear violation of US law," said Lawrence Gostin, founding director of the O'Neill Institute for Global Health Law at Georgetown University in Washington, a close observer of the WHO. "But Trump is highly likely to get away with it."

Bill Gates – chair of the Gates Foundation, a major funder of global health initiatives and some of the WHO's work – told Reuters at Davos that he did not expect the US to reconsider in the short term.

Shares of India's Adani Group companies lost about $12.5 billion in market capitalisation on Friday after the US securities regulator sought court permission to personally serve summons on group founder Gautam Adani and executive Sagar Adani over alleged fraud and a $265 million bribery scheme.

The sell-off followed a filing by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), reported by Reuters on Thursday after Indian markets had closed, seeking approval to email the summons directly to the two executives.

On Friday, Adani Enterprises, the group's flagship firm, emerged as the biggest percentage loser on India's benchmark Nifty 50 index. Its shares fell 10.65% to 1,864.2 rupees, while the Nifty ended the session down 0.95%. Shares of other Adani group companies declined between 3.4% and 14.54%.

The US indictment, unsealed in November 2024, accused Adani group executives of being part of a scheme to pay bribes to Indian officials to secure purchases of electricity produced by Adani Green Energy, a group subsidiary.

US law prohibits foreign companies that raise funds from American investors from paying bribes overseas to obtain business and from soliciting investment using false or misleading statements.

According to the SEC filing, India had previously declined two requests to serve the summons, which the regulator has been attempting to deliver since last year.

The Adani Group has rejected the allegations as "baseless" and said it would pursue "all possible legal recourse" to defend itself. It did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the latest SEC filing dated 21 January.

"Market participants assumed nothing was pending and that the group had been cleared, so the SEC filing appears to have come out of the blue," said Ambareesh Baliga, an independent market analyst.

With no clear timeline for the next steps, Baliga said the issue could linger for at least another fortnight, adding that overall market sentiment was already weak

TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, yesterday (22 January) said it has finalized a deal to establish a majority American-owned joint venture that will secure US data, to avoid a US ban on the short video app used by over 200 million Americans.

The deal is a milestone for the social media firm after years of battles that when President Trump tried to ban the app over national security concerns.

Trump later opted not to enforce a law passed in April 2024 ByteDance to sell its US assets by the following January or face a ban - a measure.

ByteDance said TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC will secure US user data, apps and algorithms through data privacy and cybersecurity measures. It disclosed few details about the divestiture.

Trump praised the deal in a social media post saying TikTok "will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World."

He thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping "for working with us and, ultimately, approving the Deal. He could have gone the other way, but didn't, and is appreciated for his decision."

The agreement provides for American and global investors to hold 80.1% of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9%.

TikTok USDS JV's three managing investors - cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake (SILAK.UL) and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX - will each hold 15%.

A White House official told Reuters that the US and Chinese governments had signed off on the deal. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment.

Trump last year said the deal met the terms of divestiture requirements under the 2024 law. The White House in September said the venture would operate TikTok's US app.

Interested parties have yet to disclose elements of the deal such as the business relationships between the venture and ByteDance.

The president has more than 16 million followers on his personal TikTok account and credited the app with helping him win reelection.

He received a document from TikTok on 22 December touting how popular he is on the app, showed a photo published this month by the New York Times. The White House also launched an official TikTok account in August.

Japan's exports to the United States dropped 11.1% in December and slipped more than four% last year, official figures showed Thursday, as tariffs bite.

In 2025, Japan's exports to the United States fell 4.1%, contributing to a 12.6% decline in Tokyo's trade surplus with Washington to 7.5 trillion yen ($47 billion), finance ministry data showed.

A drop in the number of cars and auto parts exported, as well as rise in imports of liquified petroleum gas, cereals and power-generating machines, were primary factors in Tokyo's shrinking trade surplus with Washington, according to the data.

In December, Tokyo's exports to Washington fell 11.1% to 1.81 trillion yen ($11.4 billion), with the trade surplus shrinking 31.7% to 690.6 billion yen ($4.4 billion).

In July, Tokyo and Washington announced a trade deal lowering tariffs to 15% from a feared 25%.

Crucially, that reduction included the auto sector, an industry that accounted for 30% of Japanese exports to the United States in 2024.

However, Tokyo officials and business leaders have said the 15% tariffs are still high compared with the period before the second Trump administration.

Japan's overall trade account logged a deficit of 2.65 trillion yen in 2025, its fifth consecutive deficit.