Banking

Bloomberg Banco Santander SA is seeing the strongest demand for UK mortgages in “many, many years,” helping to underpin growth at the Spanish lending behemoth as it positions for higher interest rates globally, Chief Financial Officer Jose Garcia Cantera said. Lending for mortgages to British individuals climbed 4.4% from a year earlier to 174 billion pounds ($240 billion), Santander said ...

Bloomberg BNP Paribas SA will start a 900 million-euro ($1 billion) stock buyback after posting a 79% jump in equities trading and adding twice as much revenue as expected at its domestic markets unit. Strength in the two businesses helped offset a slump in fixed income trading that was twice as steep as the average decline at the biggest Wall ...

Bloomberg A former Wells Fargo & Co. investment adviser stole nearly $3 million from clients and used the money for personal expenses and to buy gold coins, federal prosecutors said. Kenneth A. Welsh, 41, was arrested at his home in River Edge, New Jersey on charges that he misappropriated funds from the accounts of five investors between 2016 and 2021, ...

Bloomberg UBS Group AG posted a surprise jump in profit as wealth management fees soared the most in almost three years and the firm followed Wall Street rivals in seizing on the deal boom. The Zurich-based bank topped expectations on most key metrics, including investment banking pre-tax profit that was almost double what analysts had predicted. At the key wealth ...

Bloomberg As executives from JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc, Deutsche Bank AG and other lenders prepare for the most important UN climate summit in six years, their companies continue to help provide almost as much money for fossil fuels as for green projects. Scientists have made clear that time is running out to prevent a climate catastrophe. Yet this ...

Bloomberg Untangling trillions of dollars-worth of loans and other financial contracts from Libor is a complex, expensive and time-consuming job. So, finance giants are turning to artificial intelligence to simplify and speed up a task mandated by regulators — and spare human lawyers some serious drudgery. Morgan Stanley figures it’s saved legal staffers 50,000 hours of work and $10 million ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings outlined a bullish outlook for the months ahead fuelled by likely increases in interest rates and said it would soon kickoff a higher-than-expected share buyback. Adjusted pretax profit rose to about $6 billion in the third quarter, beating estimates, the London-based lender said. Revenue climbed slightly in the third quarter for the first time in almost two ...

Bloomberg Actively pushing for a green transformation of the economy could undermine the effectiveness of the Swiss National Bank’s (SNB) monetary policy, Governing Board Member Andrea Maechler said. While the SNB takes climate change very seriously and is buying green bonds as part of its reserve management, officials need to remain within the bounds of their mandate, Maechler said in a ...

Bloomberg Zimbabwe’s government has ruled out adopting the US dollar as the country’s sole official currency, terming it “suicidal,” the state-run Sunday Mail reported, citing Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube. Ncube said such a move could result in foreign currency deficits and deflation for the African nation. “We cannot adopt the United States dollar alone as the official currency,” Ncube told ...

Bloomberg Paraguay’s central bank surprised economists by delivering its biggest interest rate increase in a decade as rising prices for food and imported fuel push inflation well above target. The central bank’s board unanimously voted to tighten by 125 basis points to push its key rate to 2.75%. The decision followed a 50 basis-point hike last month and a 25 ...