Banking

Bloomberg Efforts to fight money laundering across the Nordic and Baltic states took a more aggressive turn. Estonia’s state prosecutor is expanding an investigation into Danske Bank A/S to include Swedbank AB of Sweden. Meanwhile, the accounting firms Ernst & Young and KPMG were both reported to the police in Denmark amid allegations they failed to respond to red flags ...

Bloomberg Two of the ECB Governing Council’s leading members gave a tentative welcome to the review of the institution’s negative rate policy announced this week by President Mario Draghi. Speaking at the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington, both Chief Economist Peter Praet and Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann signaled they were open to the rethink, though they stopped short of ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. have long been locked in a fierce race to serve US consumers. One is pulling ahead. JPMorgan now generates $2 billion more in revenue from its consumer banking unit than its rival, after trailing Wells Fargo by almost $1 billion just two years ago. Jamie Dimon’s New York firm has ...

Bloomberg A senior official at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) defended the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) 2 percent inflation target as appropriate and important to achieve. “Two percent is what the central banks of major economies are pursuing,” Odd Per Brekk, deputy director of the Asia-Pacific department, said in an interview. “Over time, if this can be accomplished then it ...

Bloomberg Canadian households are wallowing in debt. Home prices are falling. Credit growth, the key driver for bank earnings, is hovering close to its slowest pace since 1983. All of which should be bad news for the country’s lenders — and good news for investors betting against them. “Should” being the operative word. Even with danger signs piling up, the ...

Bloomberg Senate Banking Chairman Mike Crapo said that he thinks the Federal Reserve should cut interest rates to boost growth, aligning him with President Donald Trump and his latest choices for the Fed board, Stephen Moore and Herman Cain. “I personally think that we’re at a point where they could be reduced a little bit now,” the Idaho Republican said. ...

Bloomberg UBS Group AG investors should reject the firm’s compensation report, shareholder adviser Glass Lewis said, citing high fines in a legal dispute and the generally lackluster performance of the bank’s shares. UBS had proposed a pay package that included 14.1 million francs ($14 million) in compensation for Chief Executive Officer Sergio Ermotti for last year. While that’s down slightly ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG came last in a ranking of European and US investment banks compiled by JPMorgan Chase & Co. because of ongoing concerns about trading revenue. Analysts led by Kian Abouhossein cut their forecasts for Deutsche Bank “mainly on lower trading revenue” as European lenders are set to report a weaker first quarter than their US counterparts, the ...

Bloomberg Shorting Canadian banks has long made for a poor bet by US hedge funds, and this time will be no different, according to Bank of Nova Scotia Chief Executive Officer Brian Porter. “US hedge funds, from time to time, have appeared in this country over the last 10 years with the same hypothesis of shorting Canadian banks, and it ...

Bloomberg Singapore meted out lengthy bans to convicted former HSBC Holdings Plc and United Overseas Bank Ltd. bankers for fraud and dishonest conduct. Emeline Tang, a former HSBC employee, was banned from providing any capital markets and financial advisory services for 20 years, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a statement on Wednesday. Former UOB employee Nguyen Duy Minh ...