Banking

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc. plans to hire about 20 bankers in Saudi Arabia and start operations by the end of the year after receiving an investment banking license for the kingdom in April. “The total number of people we want to have on the ground for the CMA license is up to 20 for our medium-term plans here,” James Forese, Citigroup’s ...

Bloomberg Blackstone Group LP could double its assets under management to $800 billion in five years, according to CEO Steve Schwarzman. “We have internal targets, plans, aspirations to basically double where we are which would take us to $800 billion,” Schwarzman said in Riyadh on Wednesday. When asked whether the New York-based asset manager could be a trillion dollar fund, ...

Bloomberg Singapore’s second-largest lender has decided that the best place to expand its research is the country’s rival market Hong Kong. Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. plans to add coverage of 60 Hong Kong-listed stocks, with 14 to 20 started by year-end, according to Carmen Lee, its head of research. That would supplement the around 75 firms already tracked by Bank of ...

Bloomberg Barclays Plc’s Jes Staley may need to reassure investors on two fronts when the bank reports third-quarter results on Thursday. While an industrywide slump in securities trading has likely weighed on the investment bank, analysts will look for any clues on how the group’s more profitable retail and card businesses are faring after US rivals signaled this month they’re ...

Bloomberg The question of who’ll be the next leader of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has gained urgency after Governor Zhou Xiaochuan dropped heavy hints that he’s ready to head into retirement. Announcements about changes in the PBOC leadership could come at any time. With President Donald Trump mulling who will be the next chair of the Federal Reserve ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc, which has the biggest investment bank in Saudi Arabia, says foreign investors are getting ready for their first significant stock purchases in the kingdom as an upgrade to emerging-market status looks likely. It’s ‘inevitable’ that MSCI Inc., whose classifications can influence billions of dollars of asset allocations, will add Saudi Arabia to its emerging-market benchmarks, Majed ...

Bloomberg UniCredit SpA, Italy’s biggest bank, reported a six-fold jump in third-quarter profit, driven by the sale of its Pioneer Global Asset Management unit. Net income rose to 2.82 billion euros in the three months through September from 447 million euros a year earlier, the Milan-based bank said in statement on Tuesday. Revenue fell 3.9 percent to 4.65 billion euros ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) is considering a small cut to its inflation projection for this year in a quarterly report to be released next week, according to people familiar with the central bank’s discussions. The BOJ may lower its forecast for core inflation from 1.1 percent for the fiscal year ending in March 2018, said the people, who ...

Bloomberg Helen Grogan says her bank has left her brimming with ‘rage, frustration and anger’ and 40,000 euros ($47,000) worse off. In common with 13,000 other Irish bank customers, Grogan was overcharged in a mortgage scandal that has reignited anger towards the industry almost a decade after taxpayers had to bail it out. “I was ripped off by the bank,” ...

Bloomberg Vietnam’s central bank said record-high foreign reserves will enable it to keep the currency stable for the rest of the year as the government focuses on boosting growth in the Southeast Asian economy. With reserve levels at $45 billion, “we are confident that we will be able to maintain the dong’s value,” in 2017, Nguyen Thi Hong, deputy governor ...