Bloomberg Mark Carney is headed into his last full year at the helm of the Bank of England, and it could be his most turbulent yet. In a tenure that has seen the Scottish referendum, two general elections and the Brexit vote, the BOE governor is now in charge of keeping the ship steady as the divorce from the European ...
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Wall Street lenders stuck with $1.6bn unsold loans
Bloomberg A rout in the once-hot market for risky corporate loans has some of Wall Street’s largest banks stuck with at least $1.6 billion of unwanted leveraged buyout debt. Banks including Barclays Plc, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. — among the top providers of loans for LBOs — have struggled in recent weeks to sell loans ...
Read More »Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse targeted by EU bond probe
Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, Credit Suisse Group AG and Credit Agricole SA were targeted by a European Union probe into a suspected cartel for sovereign-bond trading. The European Commission sent the banks antitrust complaints, saying they may have exchanged “commercially sensitive information and coordinated on prices†on trading of US dollar supra-sovereign, sovereign and agency bonds via online chatrooms between ...
Read More »Deutsche Bank sees exodus of investment bankers in Asia
Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, the German lender that’s struggling to enact a turnaround, has seen a surge in turnover among investment bankers in Asia since May, as cost-cutting and sinking morale has prompted dealmakers to leave, people with knowledge of the matter said. Almost 50 bankers in Hong Kong and Singapore have left in the past six months, or about ...
Read More »Danske scandal: First bankers apprehended
Bloomberg An international criminal investigation into Danske Bank A/S has led to the first group of bankers being apprehended, and prosecutors say more will probably follow. Police in Estonia have detained 10 former Danske employees in connection with what may be Europe’s biggest ever money laundering case. The country’s head of central criminal police, Aivar Alavere, said the group is ...
Read More »Santander’s UK unit gets $42mn FCA fines
Bloomberg The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority fined Banco Santander SA’s UK unit 32.8 million pounds ($42 million) — the regulator’s biggest penalty this year — for failing to pass on inheritances to dead customers’ beneficiaries. The bank didn’t transfer funds totalling 183 million pounds to beneficiaries when it should have, affecting 40,428 customers, the regulator said on Wednesday. The bank ...
Read More »Citigroup faces $180mn loss on Asia loan
Bloomberg Citigroup Inc faces losses of as much as $180 million on loans made to an Asian hedge fund whose foreign-exchange wagers went awry, prompting board-level discussions and a business shakeup, according to a person briefed on the matter. The hedge fund, managed by a unit of GF Holdings (Hong Kong) Corp, and Citigroup are in discussions on the positions ...
Read More »The $7.9trn pile of negative-yielding debt is growing fast
Bloomberg For all the hand wringing over the end of ultra-loose monetary policy, the world just doesn’t seem able to shake its addiction to negative-yielding debt. Only two months ago, speculation was rife that the Bank of Japan would have to step in to stop yields from rising. Now, rates on benchmark bonds are poised to drop back below zero. ...
Read More »ECB’s $204bn corporate bond buying upends credit markets
Bloomberg The European Central Bank’s purchase of almost 180 billion euros ($204 billion) of corporate bonds has upended the region’s credit markets, even if some fast-moving indicators are back to pre-intervention levels. Metrics such as spreads and the number of negative-yielding bonds have largely returned to levels seen in early 2016, before the ECB announced plans to start buying corporate ...
Read More »Banks test Frankfurt rate swaps move
Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG and 16 other lenders recently tested moving interest-rate swap positions from London to Frankfurt, according to people familiar with the matter, a signal that financial firms are pushing ahead with preparations for no-deal Brexit. The banks made dummy trades on December 3 in the first known dry run of a service that could move trillions of ...
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