Banking

Bloomberg The creation of central bank digital currencies to address economic inequality with new retail loan and payments channels must be designed so they don’t “cannibalise” a country’s commercial financial system, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. If set up hastily, retail CBDCs could risk “disintermediating commercial banks” and lead to the exodus of 20% to 30% of their funding ...

Bloomberg Westpac Banking Corp has agreed to sell its life insurance unit to Dai-ichi Life Holdings Inc’s Australian subsidiary TAL for $660 million as Australia’s second-largest lender continues to jettison non-core assets to focus on lending. The completion of the transaction, confirming an earlier Bloomberg report, is expected to happen in the second half of next year, Westpac said. Under ...

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc has sold the first of 13 markets Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser put on the block, agreeing a deal to offload its Australian consumer unit to National Australia Bank Ltd. The Australian lender will pay the US bank cash for the net assets of the Citigroup Consumer Business plus a premium of A$250 million ($184 million), according ...

Bloomberg India’s central bank kept interest rates unchanged at a record low to support the economy, even as a split appeared among policy makers on continuing with the lower-for-longer stance. The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) six-member Monetary Policy Committee retained its main repurchase rate at 4%, as predicted by all 29 economists in a Bloomberg survey. Policy makers voted ...

Bloomberg ING Groep NV beat expectations for second-quarter profit after releasing money set aside for doubtful loans, and said it will boost payouts for investors. The Dutch lender’s net income soared to 1.46 billion euros ($1.73 billion) in the three months through June from 299 million euros a year earlier. That compared to the 1.15-billion-euro average estimate of analysts surveyed ...

Bloomberg Credit Agricole SA’s profit came in above expectations as it joined European peers in posting lower provisions to reflect the improving economy. The Paris-based lender said net income jumped to 1.97 billion euros ($2.3 billion) in the second quarter, more than double the same period last year and above the 1.2 billion euros anticipated by analysts polled by Bloomberg. ...

Bloomberg KakaoBank Corp, South Korea’s first internet-only lender to go public, surged more than 70% in its trading debut in Seoul to become the country’s largest retail lender by market value. The stock’s jump of as much as 74% gave the company, which doesn’t have brick-and-mortar branches, a market capitalisation of more than 32 trillion won ($28 billion), bigger than ...

Bloomberg Singapore banks will reward investors with higher payouts from better-than-expected earnings, just a week after the central bank lifted restrictions on dividends, marking a nascent recovery from one of their most turbulent years. All of the city state’s top banks — DBS Group Holdings, United Overseas Bank and Oversea-Chinese Banking — said they would increase dividends by an average ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England signalled that its concerns over inflation are strong enough to warrant the withdrawal of some support to the UK economy over the next three years. Policy makers led by Governor Andrew Bailey said they now expect annual price growth to peak higher than expected around 4%. While most of the increase may prove temporary, meeting ...

Bloomberg Commerzbank AG saw earnings last quarter hit by a long series of one-time charges, undermining an otherwise solid performance and complicating efforts by Chief Executive Officer Manfred Knof to grow the lender. The shares fell after Commerzbank reported 18% lower revenue and a net loss of 527 million euros, both worse than estimated. However, it reiterated a forecast for ...