Banking

Bloomberg UBS Group AG is in the early stages of planning the succession of Sergio Ermotti, one of European banking’s longest-serving chief executive officers, according to Chairman Axel Weber. Ermotti, almost eight years on the job, and Weber himself are at “a point in time where you need to start thinking about what is it that you’re going to do ...

Bloomberg Kenya’s biggest mortgage lender plans to double its home-loan business over the next two years by offering longer repayment periods, its chief executive officer said. KCB Group Ltd, which has 70 billion shillings ($685 million) in home loans and is also the country’s biggest bank by assets, wants to have 20,000 mortgages on its books by the end of ...

Bloomberg It may finally be time to load up on risky assets, Bank of America (BofA) says. The bank’s proprietary Bull & Bear Indicator, which measures investor sentiment by weighing factors like equity and bond fund flows, gave its first “buy” signal since Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016, strategists led by Michael Hartnett wrote in a note. ...

Bloomberg As a growing number of cryptocurrency ventures struggle for funding, cut staff or shut down, all is well in one small corner of the industry: lending. Creditors focussing on the crypto arena say they’re finding strong demand from borrowers who don’t want to sell their virtual coins at depressed prices, as well as from big investors eager to borrow ...

Bloomberg Saudi Arabian banks may report double-digit earnings growth this year as rising interest rates and increased government spending offset the risk of higher bad-debt charges. Even loans may expand faster after four years of declines led to a contraction in 2017. The government’s 2019 budget increased spending in the face of plunging oil prices. “More stimulus, business confidence, privatisation ...

Bloomberg The biggest Nordic bank is starting to feel a lot smaller. Nordea Bank Abp joined the euro zone in October by moving its headquarters to Helsinki from Stockholm. A month later, it learned it was losing its status as a global systemically important bank. Now, it appears Nordea is also too small to make it into the Euro Stoxx ...

Bloomberg Ghana completed a cleanup of its banking industry in which lenders were required to raise their capital and improve governance, with two-thirds of them meeting the new requirements, Bank of Ghana Governor Ernest Addison said. The West African nation has “23 well-capitalised” banks, compared with 34 previously, which raised their holdings to at least 400 million cedis ($81.1 million), ...

Bloomberg South African Reserve Bank Deputy Governor Francois Groepe has resigned, leaving only five people on the central bank’s rate-setting panel. He will leave at the end of the month, which is after the Monetary Policy Committee’s next interest-rate decision on January 17. Groepe has been a deputy governor and member of the MPC since January 2012. The MPC increased ...

Bloomberg Jerome Powell has been sucked into a one-sided communication fight with Donald Trump, who blames the Federal Reserve chairman for losses in the stock market. Powell can’t match the president’s megaphone on social media. But he can try to prevent equity prices becoming the barometer of Fed success by reminding the public that Congress gave it a different mandate: ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell signalled the central bank could pause interest-rate increases if the US economy weakened and pledged he will stay at his post even if President Donald Trump presses him to resign. Invoking events of 2016, when the Fed held rates unchanged through most of the year amid financial market turmoil spurred by concerns over slower ...