Banking

Bloomberg Switzerland is proposing bigger capital cushions for the country’s top banks that could force UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG to set aside an additional 24 billion Swiss francs ($24 billion) in reserves. The Finance Ministry is weighing an amendment to capital adequacy rules to try to ensure that the parent companies of systemically important banks are ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG’s merger talks have prompted rare unity across Germany’s fractious political spectrum: a collective thumbs down. Lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic-led bloc to the anti-capitalist Left party and far-right AfD are laying into the plans. With the Social Democratic colleagues of Finance Minister Olaf Scholz also questioning the deal, the project’s main ...

Bloomberg The Spanish government won final approval for an emergency decree boosting tenants’ rights at the expense of landlords less than four weeks before a general election. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist administration prevailed 33 votes to 31 at the parliamentary panel that can confirm or revoke legislation when the full plenary is out of session. The measures, negotiated with ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump called on the Federal Reserve to open the monetary floodgates to turn the world’s largest economy into a “rocket ship.” “I personally think the Fed should drop rates. I think they really slowed us down. There’s no inflation. I would say in terms of quantitative tightening, it should actually now be quantitative easing,” he told reporters ...

Bloomberg Societe Generale SA plans to cut as many as 700 jobs in Paris and eliminate hundreds more positions in London and New York after experiencing a difficult first-quarter in investment banking, people with knowledge of the matter said. The French bank is speeding up staff reductions at its headquarters after tough trading conditions persisted into the new year and ...

Bloomberg A week after Swedbank AB fired its chief executive officer, the lender is parting ways with its chairman as a multibillion dollar money-laundering scandal forces top-level changes. Lars Idermark has decided to leave Sweden’s oldest bank and biggest mortgage lender with immediate effect, Swedbank said in a statement. That follows a March 28 announcement that CEO Birgitte Bonnesen had ...

Bloomberg Commerzbank AG Chief Executive Officer Martin Zielke, almost three weeks into formal discussions about a combination with Deutsche Bank AG, is lobbying hard to overcome internal opposition to the idea. The lender doesn’t have the market share needed for costly investments to pay off, Zielke told employees in a memo. Low interest rates are squeezing profits, regulatory expenses have ...

Bloomberg Iceland’s central bank now has more scope to cut interest rates as a result of this week’s agreement between workers and employers, despite an “unfortunate” clause in the deal that ties planned pay hikes to monetary policy, Governor Mar Gudmundsson said. “The break-even inflation rate in the market has now slumped, the exchange rate has been strengthening and our ...

Bloomberg Banco Santander SA pledged to cut 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) of annual costs and ramp up investment in digital and its prized Brazilian business as the Spanish lender seeks to revive its moribund share price. The Spanish banking group plans to achieve the incremental cost cuts over three to four years while investing 20 billion euros in digitalisation, ...

Bloomberg UniCredit SpA is nearing an agreement with US authorities over allegations that the bank provided dollar-clearing services to Iranian clients in violation of US sanctions, people with the knowledge of the matter said. The deal would cost the Italian lender about $900 million but spare it from criminal prosecution, the people said. A settlement of that size would be ...