Banking

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc will establish an office to spearhead its strategy in China’s fast-growing Greater Bay Area, stepping up its bet on the world’s second-largest economy. Daniel Chan, currently head of business banking at HSBC in Hong Kong, was named head of the unit, which will oversee the strategy to “capture opportunities” in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau, the ...

Bloomberg Tanzania’s central bank ordered the nation’s lenders to deal with souring loans and slash costs, threatening jobs in the latest industry reforms announced by President John Magufuli’s government. Bank of Tanzania gave lenders until the end of 2022 to reduce their cost-to-income ratios to below 55% and to cut non-performing loans to below 5% of their books, according to ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer Noel Quinn said the bank had no option but to close an exiled Hong Kong lawmaker’s account as he defended the lender against accusations it had become a tool of Chinese authorities. Facing questions from UK lawmakers, Quinn said HSBC’s decision was driven purely by the need to comply with local laws. “I’m ...

Bloomberg ICICI Bank Ltd.’s third-quarter profit rise 19% from a year earlier, boosted by robust loan growth. Net income at India’s second-largest private lender rose to 49.39 billion rupees ($677 million) in the quarter ended December 31 from 41.5 billion rupees a year earlier, it said in a statement. That beat the average estimate of 42.4 billion rupees from 17 ...

Bloomberg MoneyLion, a mobile banking, lending and investment platform, is in talks to go public through a merger with Fusion Acquisition Corp., a blank-check company. Fusion, the special purpose acquisition company, has begun discussions to raise new equity from potential investors for a transaction that’s set to value the combined entity at more than $2 billion, said the people, who ...

Bloomberg Andrea Orcel is set to step away from tens of million of dollars in deferred pay once he realises his ambition of becoming the chief executive officer of a top European bank. UniCredit SpA will not compensate the former UBS Group AG star executive for deferred payments he will lose for joining a peer within seven years of leaving ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to fund 500 million pounds ($686 million) in UK home loans originated by London-based fintech LendInvest Ltd. The US bank will use LendInvest to finance properties that will be leased, known as buy-to-let loans, according to a statement. LendInvest has loaned more than 3.5 billion pounds online since its inception about a decade ago, ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank (ECB) is urging lenders to do a better job of gauging the risks they face from a potential spike in defaults as the pandemic increasingly hits companies and consumers. The worsening economy has slowed banks’ efforts to reduce existing bad debts and “there is also an embedded level of distress in loan books that is ...

Bloomberg Asian and European investors are pouring money into dollar corporate bonds, which have grown more enticing as longer-term US yields have risen and hedging costs have fallen. A European investor can earn about 1.03% on an average US high-grade corporate bond after hedging, or around 0.8 percentage point above euro-denominated counterparts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s one ...

Bloomberg More than one-third of the 89 billion pounds ($122 billion) of lending handed out by the UK government to help businesses through the pandemic will never be repaid, according to the National Audit Office. The report, based on government estimates, says 31 billion pounds ($42.51 billion) will need to be written off, highlighting the dire position of many firms ...