Banking

Bloomberg After being challenged in the mortgage market, Sweden’s biggest banks are fending off a new wave of robots — this time in investment advice and wealth management. One of their new rivals is Optise AB, which last year began offering independent savings advice, fund data and tailor-made portfolios to retail investors via a mobile app. The company, which refers ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has approached a Saudi state-owned entity about a multibillion-dollar deal, according to the bank’s chief executive officer for the Middle East and North Africa. “We’re very keen on deploying our principal capital in the region in both forms: credit and equity capital,” Wassim Younan said in an interview in Riyadh. “We continue to prospect for ...

Bloomberg Australia’s banking probe could see job cuts in the finance and real estate sectors equivalent to losses during the 2008 global financial crisis, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPMorgan analysts led by Sally Auld see three main channels for the Royal Commission to exert influence on the Australian economy: tighter lending standards and slower credit growth; wealth effects ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG’s new chief executive officer pledged to keep the struggling lender “strong” in Asia even as he prepares to overhaul operations worldwide. “We can only be relevant to our clients if we continue to be strong in Asia,” CEO Christian Sewing said on Monday at an investor forum in Singapore on his first visit to the region ...

Bloomberg The pound may have sold off into the Bank of England meeting but its recent drop is bringing back the bulls. Sterling slid almost 6 percent in the three weeks leading up to the May BOE policy announcement, as traders slashed bets on a hike in borrowing costs. Now they’ve been proven right as the central bank opted to ...

Bloomberg A global squeeze on emerging market assets has forced the Reserve Bank of India to take actions that sometime appear at conflict with each other. To help cool rising bond yields, the central bank said that it will buy bonds for the first time in 18 months, infusing cash into financial markets. But that counters moves to prop up ...

Bloomberg The Philippines became the latest emerging market to raise interest rates, following through with a pledge to curb inflation in a booming economy. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas increased the overnight reverse repurchase rate to 3.25 percent from a record-low 3 percent, it said in a statement in Manila. Thirteen of 16 economists predicted the decision, with the rest expecting ...

Bloomberg European Central Bank President Mario Draghi stepped up his call for a euro-area fund to make sure countries don’t drift apart in future crises. “We need an additional fiscal instrument to maintain convergence during large shocks, without having to overburden monetary policy,” he said at a European Union event in Florence, Italy. “Its aim would be to provide an ...

Bloomberg Several Mexican banks experienced large cash withdrawals in recent weeks after possible cyber attackers infiltrated some financial institutions, triggering unauthorised money transfers, the central bank said in an interview with Bloomberg. Banco de Mexico has zeroed in on five financial institutions whose external connection to the central bank’s electronic payment system was compromised, Lorenza Martinez, the central bank’s head ...

Bloomberg A legal battle is heating up over scraps of a synthetic securitisation structured before the global financial crisis, highlighting risks in derivatives trades that are proliferating again. Deutsche Bank AG and Morgan Stanley are fighting over 36 million euros ($43 million) that wasn’t repaid to junior noteholders. The deal matured in December 2016 and was designed to provide credit ...