Banking

Bloomberg Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. reached a last-minute settlement with the nation’s securities regulator over allegations it rigged a benchmark interest rate. The in-principle agreement was announced on the first day of a court hearing over allegations ANZ Bank, Westpac Banking Corp. and National Australia Bank Ltd. traders sought to manipulate the benchmark bank bill swap rate ...

ISTANBUL / Reuters Turkey and Iran’s central banks have formally agreed to trade in their local currencies, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in a move aimed at increasing bilateral trade. Under the deal, the Iranian rial and Turkish lira will be easily converted to help reduce the costs of currency conversion and transfer for traders. The countries had been using ...

Bloomberg Japanese banks may have too many employees and branches, and overcapacity is contributing to a drop in earnings power that may hurt financial system, according to the nation’s central bank. “The low profitability of Japanese financial institutions is striking from an international perspective,” the Bank of Japan said in its twice-yearly financial system report. The number of employees and ...

Bloomberg Smaller Asian bond investors overlooked by banks are increasingly turning to exchange-traded funds to get exposure to fixed income, according to BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager. “Banks are using their balance sheet for bigger institutions,” said Sean Cunningham, head of capital markets and fixed income for iShares and index investing in Asia-Pacific at BlackRock, whose assets under ...

DUBAI / Reuters Saudi Arabia’s National Commercial Bank (NCB), the kingdom’s largest lender, reported a 8.4 percent rise in third-quarter net profit on Sunday, helped by a fall in expenses and provisions for bad loans. The bank made a net profit of 2.13 billion riyals ($568 million) in the three months to September 30, it said in a bourse statement. ...

Bloomberg New Zealand reminded currency traders this week of the power of politics to roil financial markets. The challenge is to figure out which world capital — from Tokyo to Washington — will deliver the next jolt. The kiwi tumbled as much as 2 percent and extended those losses as the opposition Labour Party won enough support in parliament to ...

DUBAI / Emirates Business Mashreq Bank, one of the UAE’s leading financial institutions, hosted the first VAT awareness seminar for its SME clients in collaboration with Morison MJS Tax Consultancy. With The UAE set to introduce VAT starting January 1, 2018, Mashreq launched a VAT awareness campaign on educating SME customers on how VAT will affect their businesses. This campaign ...

Bloomberg The research arm of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) plans to use blockchain technology to develop sharia-compliant products, aiming to support financial inclusion efforts across its member countries. The Jeddah-based Islamic Research and Training Institute said it had signed an agreement with local firm Ateon and Belgium-based SettleMint, with the first stage to focus on a technical feasibility study. ...

DUBAI / Reuters Al Rajhi Bank, Saudi Arabia’s second-largest lender by assets, reported a 12.7 percent rise in third-quarter net profit on Sunday, in line with analysts’ forecasts. The bank made 2.27 billion riyals ($605.3 million) in the three months to September 30, up from 2.01 billion riyals in the same period a year earlier, it said in a bourse ...

Bloomberg Turkish banks aren’t under investigation and US authorities haven’t sent any information or documents to their Turkish counterparts, Mehmet Ali Akben, the head of the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency, or BDDK, told Bloomberg News by phone. His denial was in response to a report in the Haberturk newspaper, citing banking sources it didn’t name, saying six Turkish banks ...