Banking

Bloomberg Negative interest rates have created a European banking industry that’s ripe for consolidation, according to the chief executive officer of the biggest Nordic bank. But bankers have lost their nerve, so the mergers aren’t happening. Casper von Koskull, the CEO of Nordea Bank Abp, says a lack of confidence within his industry is now the “biggest impediment” to the ...

Bloomberg Nordea Bank Abp said the pressure of negative interest rates and a tougher regulatory environment will force it to review its financial targets this year after delivering a set of quarterly results it characterised as “not satisfactory.” The environment has changed, “with expected lower rates for longer,” Nordea said. On top of that, management is awaiting “more clarity on ...

Bloomberg A German smartphone bank backed by billionaires Peter Thiel and Li Ka-shing has raised new funds at a valuation of $3.5 billion, making the company one of Europe’s highest valued non-listed fintech firms. N26 GmbH extended its Series D funding round by $170 million to a total $470 million, the Berlin-based company said. The round was originally announced in ...

Bloomberg A 78 percent drop in Yes Bank Ltd shares since August has left founder and former chief executive officer Rana Kapoor some $1 billion poorer. The Indian lender, which reported earnings that showed its capital buffers had weakened and bad loan ratio widened, plunged as much as 20 percent. That’s contributed to a drop in Kapoor’s net worth to ...

Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc’s transactions with Iran were worth tens of billions of dollars more than previously known, a whistleblower said in a lawsuit claiming the British bank actively pursued Iranian business in violation of US sanctions. The whistleblower, a bank executive who has not been named in court papers, was the bank’s global head of transaction banking and foreign ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren said he doesn’t believe the US economy needs an interest-rate cut, given the positive data that’s rolled in since mid-June. “The economy’s doing actually quite well,” Rosengren said in an interview with CNBC. “We’re not really having an economic slowdown.” Rosengren, who votes this year on the policy-making Federal Open Market ...

Bloomberg Ross McEwan, who engineered Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’s revival, is now taking on another turnaround job after being appointed chief executive officer of scandal-plagued National Australia Bank (NAB). During his time at RBS, which was nationalised in the wake of the global financial crisis and beset by a multitude of scandals, the bank returned to profit and ...

Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG has hired investment banker Jerry Wiant from Lazard Ltd, where he had a two-year stint as a managing director focused on banking institutions. Wiant will join Credit Suisse’s global financial institutions later this summer as a managing director and head of Americas banks, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg. He joined Lazard in ...

Bloomberg Ghana has pumped 800 million cedis ($150 million) into a special purpose vehicle created to bail out banks that don’t have enough capital, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. Ghana Amalgamated Trust (GAT) will be getting the funds from the finance ministry after dropping a plan to raise the money through a bond sale, said the ...

Bloomberg A key Canadian interest rate used by lenders to determine who can qualify for a mortgage has dropped for the first time in almost three years, potentially giving the country’s housing market a near-term boost. The Bank of Canada lowered its 5-year conventional mortgage rate to 5.19 percent, from 5.34 percent, where it had been since May 2018. It’s ...