Banking

Bloomberg Latvia’s prime minister says his nation is cracking down on shady dealings in the financial sector to help local banks regain access to directly transact in dollars. Doing so is vital for boosting trade and investment, according to Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis, whose government has sought to tighten banking supervision after the demise of the Baltic nation’s No. 3 ...

Bloomberg Europe is struggling to agree on how to tackle money laundering in the wake of high-profile scandals in the Baltic region. Latvia, grappling with the aftermath of its third-biggest bank being closed down, is calling for a pan-European approach to fighting dubious financial flows. While it has the support of other small states, it hasn’t convinced Germany, which argues ...

Bloomberg For the first time since 2008, Standard Chartered Plc (StanChart) is topping the list of bond sales arrangers in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena). The emerging markets-focussed lender climbed four places from 2017 and has already built up a substantial lead on the competition just four months into the year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. JPMorgan ...

Bloomberg Germany wants to help UK banks get access to the European market after Brexit, but would need Britain to make concessions, according to a person familiar with the German government’s position. With Brexit talks bogged down in divorce issues, the outlook for Britain’s financial services sector hasn’t been discussed yet. But the European Commission, which is leading negotiations on ...

Bloomberg Low inflation and solid growth mean there’s no pressing need to devalue the currency in the near term, State Bank of Pakistan Governor Tariq Bajwa said in an interview. Pakistan has allowed the rupee to weaken twice in recent months as it attempts to mend its deteriorating finances before elections due in July. Bajwa said another near-term move to ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...