That is the largest equity investment in such lenders outside of China so far, according to data provider CB Insights.

The Atlanta-based startup, which operates in North America and Europe, will use the cash to add lending products and other types of financial services, it said in a statement.

Kabbage plans to launch in Asia within the next 18 months, co-founder and Chief Executive Rob Frohwein said in an interview. "We believe that our system can be deployed rapidly on an international basis."

He declined to disclose Kabbage's new financial services.

Kabbage is among a group of young companies that use digital technologies to lower lending costs and offer credit faster than brick-and-mortar institutions.

Founded in 2009, Kabbage sells its technology to large banks to provide credit online, and has provided nearly $3.5 billion in funding to small businesses. Its technology powers automated lending for banks Banco Santander SA (SAN.MC), ING Groep NV (INGA.AS) and Scotiabank (BNS.TO).

SoftBank, led by Chief Executive Masayoshi Son, has become a prolific global investor in technology startups. In 2015 it invested $1 billion in San Francisco-based online student lender Social Finance, known as SoFi.

While online lending is expanding, the sector has faced growing pains, including softer institutional investor demand due to concerns about loan quality.

This has made it harder for such lenders to raise funding, leading analysts and market participants to suggest the sector might be headed for consolidation.

In March Reuters reported that Kabbage was looking to raise a new round of equity funding for potential consolidation, with listed competitor On Deck being one of its acquisition targets.

Kabbage has no "specific plan" to buy On Deck, Frohwein said. "We look at all sorts of opportunities, but it needs to be in spaces that are not similar or overlapping with what we do."

The last winter was a very harsh one in Mongolia following an especially dry summer - decimating tens of thousands of head of livestock, this is a weather pattern unique to the country and known locally as a 'dzud'. The Mongolian Meteorology Centre has warned that Mongolia is facing another harsh winter.

The coin has a millesimal fineness of 999, diameter of 38.61 mm and will be sold at MNT 300 thousand. With an aim to protect and promote the critically endangered “Mazaalai” bear to the world, the Bank of Mongolia is collecting the coin in frames of social responsibility and is offering it to the coin collectors around the world.

Listed on Mongolian Red Book of Endangered Species, the population of Mazaalai included only 15-20 adults in 1960-1970 and 25-30 in 1980. According to the recent research, less than 30 Mazaalai bears are left. The low population of Gobi bears is explained by the deprivation of their main source of food as they mainly eat roots, berries and other plants, as well as rodents sometimes. Although scientists grew substitute plants, Gobi bears refuse to eat human-made food.

The pound’s positive reaction to better-than-expected data on the UK service sector was cooled by the regulator’s decision to keep interest rates unchanged.

Sterling was trading at just €1.106 versus the euro as of 2:50pm GMT, down from the €1.20 mark.

The pullback came after the BOE's Monetary Policy Committee voted 6-2 in favor of keeping interest rates at record lows of 1.25 percent and revised down its growth and inflation forecasts.

"The 6-2 vote was as expected. However, the dovish growth and inflation (forecasts were) a surprise to the markets," Neil Jones, Mizuho's head of hedge fund FX sales, told Reuters.

The BOE has revised down its 2017 growth projections, to 1.7 percent from 1.9 percent in May, saying the UK economy will remain “sluggish.”

Growth is expected to slow to 1.6 percent in 2018, down from a previous forecast 1.9 percent.

Asset purchase programs were left unchanged, and the bank lending scheme was announced to end on schedule in February 2018.

The BOE’s governor Mark Carney has warned Britain is beginning to adjust to a ‘new and uncertain’ relationship with the European Union. The bank cannot prevent the “weaker real incomes” which this new trading relationship is likely to bring, Carney said.

"Ongoing concerns around Brexit combined with questions about wage growth (will) hit the pound hard," said David Lamb, head of dealing at FEXCO Corporate Payments. "The chances of a 2017 rate hike now look dead and buried," he added.

Earlier, a purchasing managers' index (PMI) survey showed the UK’s service sector grew at a faster pace in July than analysts forecast which came as a relief to those worried about Britain’s economic slowdown.

The office of Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga announced the appointment on Thursday. It said former grand champion Asashoryu is tasked with strengthening bilateral ties through sports and cultural exchanges during his one-year term.

During the presidential election campaign earlier this year, Asashoryu uploaded many videos on Facebook in support of Battulga of the Democratic Party.

The videos are believed to have garnered support mainly from young voters and helped Battulga win the presidency.

Asashoryu is currently a businessman in Mongolia, running a bank. He is also an executive member of the Democratic Party's local branch.

Analysts say the appointment may be interpreted as some sort of reward for Asashoryu's political activities.

The South African miner, with operations from Australia to Peru, said the deal involves A$12 million in cash and A$130 million in Red 5 shares.

The sale of Darlot, acquired by Gold Fields in 2013, is expected to close at the end of September, the company said.

Red 5 is also acquiring Saracen Mineral Holdings' (ASX:SAR) King of the Hills mine, in Western Australia.

Managing director Mark Williams said the deals marked the beginning of a new chapter for the company.

“We have entered into binding agreements to acquire two significant Western Australian gold assets which, together, establish the foundations for a long-term consolidation and growth strategy in one of Australia’s most prolific and active gold districts, the Leonora-Leinster region of WA," he said in the statement.

“The cornerstone of this strategy is the proposed acquisition of the Darlot gold mine from Gold Fields — a transaction which allows the group to transition immediately back into gold production at a well established gold mine in Australia where we can leverage our operational experience and capabilities.”

The Red 5 group also owns the currently shutter Siana gold project and Mapawa, located 20 km north of Siana, both in the Philippines.

The "Hamilton 68" dashboard (here) was built by researchers working with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan, transatlantic project set up last month to counter Russian disinformation campaigns.

The website, supported by the German Marshall Fund, displays a "near real-time" analysis of English-language tweets from a pool of 600 Twitter accounts that analysts identified as users that spread Russian propaganda.

The site was launched at a time when the Trump administration has shown reluctance to address Russian cyber attacks during ongoing investigations into whether his campaign colluded with Moscow during the 2016 election.

U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers have warned that Russia will attempt to interfere in the 2018 congressional elections and the next presidential election in 2020.

Twitter accounts selected by the new website include those overtly involved in disinformation campaigns pushed by Russian propaganda outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, and users that share information promoting the Russian government.

It also includes automated bots and "cyborgs," or users identified as partially automated and partially human-controlled, that helped amplify Russian propaganda.

"We're not necessarily saying everyone in this list is getting a paycheck from the Kremlin," said J.M. Berger, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, adding that the group had "very high confidence" accounts selected were spreading Russian disinformation.

U.S. intelligence agencies said Russia conducted a wide-ranging influence operation to discredit Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump, a Republican, win the 2016 election.

Russia has denied the allegations, and Trump has inconsistently embraced or challenged the assessment of his own intelligence agencies.

The research group is exploring ways to conduct similar analyses for other platforms, including Facebook, Alphabet's YouTube and Reddit, but such projects are more difficult because less data is openly accessible, Berger said.

Twitter said it was not involved in the project. It had no other comment.

The name for the website is taken from Federalist Paper 68, which was authored by U.S. founding father Alexander Hamilton in 1788 as part of a series of essays anonymously published to defend the U.S. Constitution to the public.

Hamilton wrote of "protecting America's electoral process from foreign meddling" in Federalist Paper 68, Alliance for Securing Democracy wrote in a blog post. "Today, we face foreign interference of a type Hamilton could have scarcely imagined."

For years, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged lenders to reduce their stakes in client companies. A bank that owns shares in a loan customer may be inclined to roll over debt indiscriminately. And the bank's own stock may be vulnerable to daily market moves if the institution holds a disproportionate amount of equity in its portfolio.
The big banks resisted these calls: Their stakes in other listed companies were little changed in the last three years, Nomura Securities Co. estimates. An extreme example is Bank of Kyoto Ltd., whose 682 billion yen ($6.2 billion) in stock holdings at the end of March exceeded its market cap. The bank, which owns hot technology shares such as Kyocera Corp., Nintendo Co. and Nidec Corp., told Bloomberg News in January 2016 that it had no intention of selling them. It's no surprise that the bank trades at only 0.5 times book value. 
But a prolonged zero-rate policy is starting to bite.
Take Mitsubishi UFJ Finanancial Group Inc., the megabank that reported the best June quarter earnings of the group. The spread between its lending and deposit rates narrowed to 0.87 percent, from 0.92 percent a year ago, while the loan-to-deposit ratio was a paltry 60 percent. There's just no appetite for loans in Japan, even if corporations can borrow at less than 1 percent. 
So share sales are doing the heavy lifting. The most striking case was Mizuho Financial Group Inc., which had a slight decline in net profit from a year ago. Without equity disposals, there would have been a profit warning -- capital gains from those sales accounted for more than half of income in the latest three-month period.

Thanks to those disposals, all three banks were on track to meet their guidance targets for the year that ends next March.

Even at this pace, these sales are just flakes of gold. After a 25 percent gain in the Topix Index in the last 12 months, the megabanks' portfolios are a mountain of wealth. Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. combined could have realized almost 7 trillion yen in capital gains had they sold their holdings at the end of June: That's more than 30 percent of their combined market cap.

By comparison, the banks' holdings of domestic bonds and other readily sold assets, such as foreign securities, represent hardly any upside. 
Japan's banks are in a difficult place. While the rest of the G-10 countries are moving toward higher borrowing costs, the Bank of Japan is spinning its wheels, with little sign of improved lending rates.
A happy unintended consequence of that stasis, however, is that the megabanks are unwinding cross-shareholdings, and improving their governance.