Banking

Bloomberg Swiss National Bank sight deposits fell for the first time in seven weeks, suggesting the central bank has scaled back interventions to weaken the franc. Sight deposits, considered an early indicator of SNB market activity, declined 154 million francs ($155 billion). They had risen by 2.5 billion francs the previous week, and 3.8 billion francs the period before that. ...

Bloomberg Ireland won’t change its restrictions on banker pay, its junior finance minister signalled, in the clearest sign yet that the rules will remain in place. “I’m of the view the decision is made,” Michael D’Arcy said in a Bloomberg TV interview in Hong Kong. “The bankers in those institutions are well paid. The threshold is 500,000 euros and that’s ...

Bloomberg Now is finally the time to buy risk assets, with global stocks set to advance into the year-end, strategists at JPMorgan Chase & Co said. Positive technical indicators and monetary easing will likely outweigh the uncertainty of the US-China trade war and the “wild card” of developments in tariff negotiations, according to JPMorgan. After August’s sell-off, the strategists signalled ...

Bloomberg Denmark’s financial watchdog has reported Danske Bank A/S to the police after it overcharged retail investors. The bank, which is already under criminal investigation in the US and across Europe for its role in an Estonian money laundering scandal, misled its customers about the returns they could expect on short-term investments, the Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) in Copenhagen said ...

Bloomberg Germany’s most convoluted tax case in recent memory gets a human face when two former investment bankers make their debut in court. But more than the duo’s dealings, it’s the role of the financial services industry at large that will come under scrutiny. The two men, Martin S, 41, and Nicholas D, 38, are charged with helping orchestrate transactions ...

Bloomberg As the likelihood of Britain crashing out of the European Union (EU) without a trading agreement rises, Citigroup Inc estimates that such an event could cut domestic banks’ earnings by as much as 25 percent. A “no-deal exit” would curtail the revenue of high street lenders as economic growth slows and interest rates remain depressed, analysts including Andrew Coombs ...

Bloomberg India announced its most sweeping bank overhaul in decades, minutes before data showed economic growth in Asia’s No. 3 economy slumped to a six-year low. Four new lenders that result from a series of state-bank mergers will hold business worth 55.8 trillion rupees ($781 billion), or about 56 percent of the Indian banking industry, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc’s Libra digital currency will be a focus for antitrust and financial regulators in the near future, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said, confirming an early-stage probe into how the new payment system will work. “From both a competition and a financial stability perspective, Libra will have our interest,” Vestager told reporters in Copenhagen. She said the EU ...

Bloomberg Incoming European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde offered a clear sign that she’s ready to follow Mario Draghi’s path and keep monetary policy ultra-loose to lift euro-area inflation. In her first comprehensive comments on monetary policy since winning the job, she said the ECB has the tools to tackle a downturn and must be ready to use them ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG’s only retail banking franchise outside Europe is getting more investment, amid sweeping cost cuts and restructuring taking place elsewhere at the German lender. After receiving a 470 million euro ($520 million) capital injection earlier this year, Deutsche Bank’s Indian operation is set to hire about 140 people and boost its retail banking and wealth management operations. ...