Banking

Bloomberg UBS Group AG is close to settling a tax evasion case with Italy for about 100 million euros ($110 million), according to people familiar with the matter. The agreement may come within the next few weeks, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private. UBS declined to comment. The Swiss bank has said it ...

Bloomberg Mario Draghi warned against exaggerating the tradeoffs between risk sharing and risk reduction in the euro zone, arguing it has hampered monetary policy transmission. “Since a long time we have reached an impasse on key issues including on completing the banking union and deepening fiscal policy coordination,” the European Central Bank President said in Frankfurt on Wednesday. “This has ...

Bloomberg Nigerian policy makers urged banks to turn on the taps and increase lending to stimulate the economy, or have access to a near-risk free way of making money choked off. The West African nation’s Monetary Policy Committee is using persuasion to get banks away from parking their cash in high-yielding government securities to divert these funds to the private ...

Bloomberg Japan’s biggest banks have warned investors of a tough year ahead. The nation’s three megabanks have been relying on the healthy status of borrowers and sales of so-called cross-shareholdings for earnings as rock-bottom interest rates crimp lending profitability. Results on Wednesday showed they are losing those benefits at a time when the economy is weakening, trade tensions are escalating ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. won shareholder approval for its executive pay plan even after an advisory firm criticised the firm’s policy as too subjective and opaque. A resolution to approve compensation for five named executive officers received backing from 72 percent of voters, according to a preliminary tally at JPMorgan’s annual shareholders meeting in Chicago. It was the lowest ...

Bloomberg Angela Merkel is preparing for a clash with France as she pushes Germany’s most ambitious bid yet for a top European Union job. The German chancellor is focussed on securing the presidency of the European Commission or the European Central Bank for one of her compatriots, according to officials with knowledge of her thinking. If her Bavarian ally Manfred ...

Bloomberg It is wrong to suggest that the UK should pursue a no deal Brexit merely to end uncertainty for businesses, according to Ben Broadbent, the Bank of England’s deputy governor for monetary policy. In a speech in London, Broadbent said that surveys indicate that firms are most worried about the prospects of a no-deal, no-transition Brexit, and that pursuing ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell agrees that the torrid market in high-risk corporate loans looks a lot like the mortgage industry in the run-up to the subprime crisis, but he says US regulators are watching closely this time around and the financial system is better shielded. In a sweeping analysis of leveraged lending Powell delivered a response to critics ...

Bloomberg In the wake of the economic crisis, Paul Volcker called automated teller machines the last financial innovation that improved society. A decade later, their popularity is slipping. The number of ATMs around the world fell for the first time last year as banks closed branches and redirected resources towards digital payments, consulting firm RBR said in a study released. ...

Bloomberg Some top Deutsche Bank AG investors are growing increasingly dissatisfied with supervisory board Chairman Paul Achleitner. Cerberus Capital Management and HNA Group have internally discussed pushing for Achleitner’s exit before his term expires in 2022, according to people with knowledge of the matter. While the shareholders have voiced their frustrations among themselves, it’s unclear how they’ll vote at the ...