As summer begins, credit card companies continue to offer the longest 0% APR credit card promotions in recent history. Last summer, most 0% credit card offers lasted 12 months or less. This year, a number of companies are offering 0% interest rates on purchases and balance transfers for as long as 21 months.
Whether or not these superlative offers will survive the summer remains to be seen. Some credit card companies have already begun shortening the length of 0% APR deals and others may follow suit. However, consumers looking for low rate cards today have significantly better options than they’ve had in more than five years.
Here’s a rundown of the top offers:
The Citibank Platinum Card leads the pack amongst low rate credit cards with an industry leading 0% APR on balance transfers and purchases that lasts 21 months. Cit
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– Peabody Energy , a venture between China’s -Shenhua and Japan’s Mitsui & Co , and a Russian-led consortium have been picked as preliminary winners to jointly develop the prized Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit, a senior Mongolian government source said Monday.
Tavan Tolgoi is touted as one of the world’s biggest untapped coking coal deposit, which global steel makers such as ArcelorMittal and Posco , are anxious to secure, as quality deposits have become harder to find and rising demand for steel have already made such coal prices soar.
Last week, the Mongolian government said it had halved the shortlist of bidders for the western Tsankhi block to three from six, but it did not say whether it would cut the list further.
The decision, which is still subject to approval by the Mongolian parliament, comes after a long delay in developing the massive deposit — with estimated reserves of 6 billion metric tons of coal, including the world’s largest untapped deposit of steel-making coking coal.
The project, in Mongolia’s South Gobi region, is not only seen as vital to kick-starting the land-locked nation’s economy, but will generate billions of dollars in revenue for the companies involved and add tens of millions of tons of increasingly rare coking coal to global supplies each year.
“They are the preliminary winners and all the negotiation materials have already been submitted to the parliament for discussion,” the official from Mongolia’s Resources and Energy Ministry told Reuters by telephone.
“It only needs an approval from the parliament …
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– Web hosting company The Go Daddy Group Inc agreed to be bought by a private equity consortium led by KKR and Silver Lake for $2.25 billion, including debt, people close to the situation said on Friday.
The decision to sell will give Go Daddy access to deep-pocketed backers to buy other firms and broaden its presence internationally, Go Daddy’s founder Bob Parsons told Reuters in an interview.
Parsons said using the private equity buyers knowledge of the public markets would eventually aid in the company’s IPO should it take that path.
The private equity buyers also include Technology Crossover Ventures.
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– Euro zone finance ministers have approved a 12 billion euro installment of Greece’s bailout, but signaled that the nation must expect significant losses of sovereignty and jobs.
Ministers in the Eurogroup gave the go-ahead for the fifth tranche of Greece’s 110-billion-euro financial rescue agreed last year, and said details of a second aid package for Athens would be finalized by mid-September.
But within hours of Saturday’s decision, Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker warned Greeks that help from the EU and International Monetary Fund would have unpleasant consequences.
“The sovereignty of Greece will be massively limited,” he told Germany’s Focus magazine in the interview released on Sunday, adding that teams of experts from around the euro zone would be heading to Athens.
“One cannot be allowed to insult the Greeks. But one has to help them.
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Chase recently sweetened the sign-up bonus on the United Airlines Mileage Plus Visa, adding a $50 statement credit for new applicants who make a single purchase with the United credit card. This new perk comes in addition to the 25,000 United Mileage Plus bonus miles awarded after a single purchase and the 5,000 miles granted if an authorized user is added to a card-holder’s account. The 25,000 mile bonus is enough to acquire one round-trip saver award ticket to anywhere in the Continental U.S. Add in the $50 cash back bonus, and this newly revamped United credit card offer also covers the cost of checked baggage for one flight.
United and Continental Airlines still technically operate as two different airlines pending FAA approval of their application for a single operating certificate which is expected in late 2011. How
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Britons are failing to take advantage of 0pc interest deals on credit cards despite only half of people clearing their balances in full each month, a new survey has found. 
The research by moneysupermarket.com found that the average debt is held for 10 months before being paid. With 3pc of cardholders paying just the minimum balance each month, credit card users are accruing billions of pounds in unnecessary interest.
The research suggests that two thirds of credit card users have never transferred an existing balance to an interest-free balance transfer card. Almost a quarter claimed they could not be bothered to switch, did not understand how or did not know they could.
If these borrowers swapped their existing debt onto an interest-free product, figures from the comparison website suggest that they could save £279 in interest over 12 months.
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– The London Stock Exchange’s C$3.6 billion plan to buy its Toronto counterpart collapsed on Wednesday in the face of a competing bid led by Canadian banks, leaving the UK exchange itself vulnerable to takeover.
The failure, which follows Singapore Exchange Ltd.’s scuttled bid for Australia’s ASX Ltd, is the latest sign of nationalist pride frustrating cross-border deals for highly symbolic capital markets.
The failed bid from LSE opens the door to a hostile C$3.8 billion offer for TMX Group, operator of the Toronto Stock Exchange, from the Maple Group consortium.
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Now there are new restrictions on the penalty fees ever since the CARD Act of 2009 was introduced and this has been confirmed by the a recent study. There is a dramatic change that has been brought about regarding the amount of fees that issuers could charge in case of delayed or missed payments, overdraft, inactivity etc. After the passage of the CARD Act, card issuers can no longer charge a fee for non-use of the credit card.
There are at least 66 cards that have been surveyed to gauge the impact of this Act regarding the card fees that customers can be charged. All these cards were from 50 of the major card companies and these were the same cards that were surveyed during the 2010 study.
The study has also collected data on the deposit requirements, the fees, and the other conditions that are imposed on these secured cards which are issued by the 50 card majors.
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Earlier this month, a Chase Sapphire $500 bonus was rolled out on their Preferred Card. This week, Citi is fighting back by offering a bonus on the Citi ThankYou Premier Card worth between $500-$665. This limited time promotion is very similar to the Chase Sapphire offer, though there are some notable distinctions worth exploring.
Both the Citi Thank You Premier and Chase Sapphire cards award 50,000 points to new applicants. With the Sapphire card, consumers need to spend $3,000 within three months to qualify for the bonus points. With the Citi ThankYou Premier Card, only $2,000 needs to be spent within three months, making this bonus easier to obtain for consumers who might not spend $1,000 a month and could be tempted to overspend in order to reach the higher spending requirement.
Apart from this spending requirement difference, the value of these points differ slightly when they are redeemed for airfare.
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