Banking

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

Bloomberg Germany’s federal government plans to increase gross borrowing by around 15 percent to 199 billion euros ($226 billion) next year to accommodate refinancing of the nation’s “bad bank” fund that was set up during the height of the financial crisis. The government will sell 156 billion euros in bonds and 43 billion euros in short-term bills, according to the ...

Bloomberg Australia’s economy faces a trifecta of risks that could disrupt household spending and the central bank’s outlook for faster economic growth and falling unemployment. In minutes of its last policy meeting for the year, the Reserve Bank (RBA) struck a slightly dovish tone. It noted a “generalised tightening of credit availability” in the economy even as it stuck to ...

Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank (SNB) cut its inflation forecast and showed no inclination of moving off its crisis-era settings, citing franc’s strength and mounting global risks. Investor anxiety about Italian politics, trade tensions and Brexit has put upward pressure on the franc in recent months, dragging it further away from its April low against the euro. Highlighting those risks, ...

Bloomberg As the Federal Reserve approaches the final stages of monetary policy normalisation 10 years after it cut interest rates to zero, it faces the tough task of charting a less certain path while taking incoming fire from President Donald Trump. Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues are expected to ignore Trump’s criticisms and raise interest rates this week for ...