Banking

Bloomberg Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. (OCBC) is looking for a Chinese firm to team up with on a securities joint venture on the mainland, the latest foreign bank seeking to capitalsise on the nation’s financial-industry loosening. Obtaining a Chinese securities license would allow OCBC to do asset management, investment banking and fund management business in the nation, Chief Executive Officer Samuel Tsien ...

Bloomberg Commerzbank AG has been sounded out by ING Groep NV about a possible combination of the two lenders, according to a person familiar with the matter, as the German firm’s talks with domestic rival Deutsche Bank AG draw increasing criticism. Commerzbank shares extended gains after Manager Magazin first reported the talks, citing people it didn’t identify. ING Chief Executive ...

Bloomberg The delay to Brexit has potentially given the Czech central bank a small window to raise borrowing costs this year as it tries to put a lid on price growth before the economy slows, board member Tomas Holub said. After leading Europe with five interest-rate hikes last year, policy makers in Prague will most likely deliver only one in ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG estimates it could lose the equivalent of almost a fifth of Commerzbank AG’s annual revenue should it go ahead with a takeover of the lender, another potential sticking point for a deal that’s run into hurdles of late. Customers seeking to reduce their exposure to the combined lender could pull business worth 1 billion euros to ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) needs a vision for eventually unwinding its massive asset purchases if it eases policy further, according to a former BOJ official. “It’s becoming important for the BOJ to not simply say it is strengthening stimulus but to plot the course of events, to tell the story of how these steps will lead to normalisation,” ...

Bloomberg Government companies in South Africa that have had billions of rand looted through a process known as state capture shouldn’t be bailed out by the central bank even as they pose a significant fiscal risk, Governor Lesetja Kganyago said. “The challenge of dealing with too-big-to-fail SOEs, of combining cash injections with conditionality measures, needs to be dealt with by ...

Bloomberg UniCredit SpA ended one its most significant legal disputes by settling a US probe over sanctions violations, clearing the path for the lender to focus on growing its business after years of cleaning up legacy issues. The bank agreed to pay $1.3 billion to settle US charges for violating sanctions against Iran that have been hanging over UniCredit since ...

Bloomberg UBS Group AG topped the list of the 20 largest wealth firms in Asia for the sixth consecutive year even as assets under management declined in the region, Asian Private Banker said. While the Zurich-based bank continued to dominate the regional top spot by a wide margin, with assets totaling $357 billion last year, Credit Suisse Group AG slightly ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co and Barclays became the latest financial institutions to lower their estimates for Brazil’s economic growth this year, on the back of weak activity data and increased political uncertainty. They joined Itau Unibanco SA, Latin America’s largest bank by market value, which remains the most pessimistic of the three after cutting its 2019 growth forecast for ...

Bloomberg China’s central bank shifted its tone on the economy, emphasising that it will control excessive money supply amid signs of a recovery. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said it’ll keep good control of the money supply “floodgate” and not “flood” the economy with excessive liquidity, according to a statement. That wording had been dropped from the previous quarter’s ...