Banking

BLOOMBERG  UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG are offering a rare incentive for their wealth bankers in Asia to bring in fresh cash, underscoring the challenges the former Swiss rivals face to ensure stability as they seek to complete a government-orchestrated merger. Relationship managers at both firms will receive commissions of 15 basis points, or $0.15 for each ...

BLOOMBERG  Bank of America Corp (BofA) plans to ask about 40 bankers in Asia to look for jobs in other divisions as it looks to manage the industry-wide decline in dealmaking while trying to avoid headcount reduction. About half of these client-facing roles are based out of Hong Kong with a focus on China, and the majority of the affected ...

BLOOMBERG The failure of Credit Suisse Group AG shows that Europe’s top lenders would still need liquidity assistance from central banks if they were to collapse, according a top regulator. That case made clear that the needs of a so-called global systemically important bank in crisis would outstrip the bloc’s bank failure fund, as well as a planned additional facility, ...

BLOOMBERG Dollar purchases by the Indian central bank to limit the impact of foreign inflows are helping lead to shortages of the US currency in the Indian banking system and weighing on the rupee, according to analysts. The rupee has given up all of this year’s gains, having been up about 1% at the beginning of May and among Asia’s ...

BLOOMBERG Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank) missed analysts’ estimates as the lender failed to capitalise on rising interest rates and took a bigger provision for potentially souring loans than expected. Net interest margin — the difference between what the bank earns from loans and what it pays depositors — was 2.13% in the fiscal second quarter, compared with 2.11% in ...

BLOOMBERG Bank of Montreal posted a surprise drop in fiscal second-quarter profit as it set aside a larger provision for loan losses than analysts had expected and trading revenue fell. The bank’s provision for credit losses of C$1.02 billion ($755 million) included an initial C$517 million on the performing loan portfolio of Bank of the West, the bank said in ...

BLOOMBERG DBS Group Holdings Ltd expects to achieve earnings of more than S$10 billion ($7.4 billion) in the medium term, driven by a strong balance sheet and an ongoing digital transformation. Return-on-equity is expected to be in a range of 15% to 17%, Southeast Asia’s biggest lender said in an investor day presentation, referring to a time frame of three ...

BLOOMBERG  US bank deposits fell for a third week to the lowest level in nearly two years, extending a yearlong slide as customers continue seeking higher returns in money-market funds. Lending was little changed. Deposits at commercial banks decreased by $26.4 billion in the week ended May 10 to $17.1 trillion, according to seasonally adjusted data from the Federal Reserve. ...

BLOOMBERG  India is withdrawing its highest-value currency note just months before a national election, when cash in circulation typically surges. People have until September 30 to deposit 2,000 rupee ($24) notes into their bank accounts or exchange them for other denominations, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in a statement citing its “clean note policy.” It didn’t say what ...

BLOOMBERG  Federal Bank Ltd, the Indian bank backed by the International Finance Corp (IFC), plans to raise as much as 40 billion rupees ($486 million) in the next few months to support its expansion. The fundraising could be via debt or equity, or a combination of the two, with the final structure still under consideration, the bank’s Chief Executive Officer ...