Bloomberg A plan to carve out and sell the performing assets of Cyprus Cooperative Bank Ltd is attracting interest from US investment funds, said Nicholas Hadjiyiannis, Chief Executive Officer of the troubled Nicosia-based lender. Burdened by 6.2 billion euros ($7.6 billion) of non-performing exposures —equal to about one third of the country’s total economic output— Cyprus Coop is struggling to ...
Read More »Banking
Banks’ push for Libor substitute gains pace on ‘Sonia’ new version
Bloomberg Tarred by a fixing scandal that struck at the height of the financial crisis, bankers and investors for years have been grappling with finding a replacement for the Libor benchmark used to set borrowing rates on trillions of loans and derivatives. Now the Bank of England has finally unveiled a key part. On Tuesday, the BOE for the first ...
Read More »Euro bulls feel fatigue as signs of slowing economic growth cloud ECB path
Bloomberg Some euro bulls are wondering if the party is over, for now. The outlook for the past year’s best-performing major currency is being clouded by skepticism the European Central Bank will be able to tighten policy as early as previously thought, given signs of slowing economic growth. OppenheimerFunds Inc.’s multi-asset money manager Alessio de Longis is moving toward a ...
Read More »Deutsche Bank mulls cuts to US cash equities
Bloomberg Barely two weeks into the job, Deutsche Bank AG’s Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing is considering a retreat that could mark the end of the bank’s two-decade quest to compete with Wall Street. Sewing is weighing extensive cuts to the lender’s cash equities business in the US and may announce details as part of a wider restructuring of its ...
Read More »Banks told by EU to solve their $134 trillion Brexit headache
Bloomberg The European Union spurned UK calls for a legislative fix to the threat posed by Brexit to trillions of dollars of financial contracts, telling banks and insurers to solve the problem themselves. Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU’s financial-services policy chief, said the private sector must take the lead in ensuring that existing contracts can continue and not be disrupted when ...
Read More »UBS’s freshly-combined global wealth management disappoints
Bloomberg UBS Group AG’s freshly-combined wealth management unit didn’t get off to the best start. The business, which accounts for about half UBS’s pre-tax profits, posted first-quarter earnings that missed analyst estimates. That disappointment and lower-than-expected asset management results eclipsed a star performance at the investment bank, sending the shares down the most in three months. Chief Executive Officer Sergio ...
Read More »Indian banks’ bad run threatens economy
Bloomberg Scandals, bad debts, ATM cash shortages — India’s banking system has experienced them all in recent months and the bad run is starting to have repercussions for both the broader economy and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India’s nearly $1.7 trillion formal banking sector is coping with $210 billion of soured or problem loans, and some regional banks have been ...
Read More »Saudi top bank to drain liquidity to counter Libor rise
Bloomberg Saudi Arabia’s central bank plans to drain excess liquidity from the banking system to mitigate pressure on the riyal’s peg to the dollar as US interest rates rise, Governor Ahmed Abdulkarim Alkholifey said. The Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, as the central bank is known, will allow some deposits placed with commercial banks in 2016 to mature without rolling them ...
Read More »Mauritius bank building ‘strong’ Kenya presence
Bloomberg SBM Holdings Ltd., owner of Mauritius’s second-biggest bank, said it expects to be one of Kenya’s largest lenders within a year after acquiring part of Chase Bank Kenya Ltd., while remaining open to more deals in the country. The purchase, signed off by Kenya’s central bank last week, will increase competition among lenders in East Africa’s biggest economy, where ...
Read More »UK’s Hammond willing to look abroad for next BOE governor
Bloomberg UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has indicated a willingness to look abroad when he begins his search for a successor to Bank of England Governor Mark Carney. Canadian-born Carney is due to step down at the end of June 2019 after becoming the first foreigner to run the UK central bank in its three centuries. Hammond declined ...
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