Banking

Bloomberg The Bank of England told UK banks to prove that their policies on credit cards, personal loans and other types of consumer lending won’t leave them weaker in a downturn. The BOE’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) said on Tuesday that firms need to show that they’re not underestimating the risks of consumer credit given the current “benign economic environment.” ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the dominant commodities trader on Wall Street, is reviewing the direction of the business after a slump in the first half of the year, according to people with knowledge of the matter. By reconsidering the bank’s long-held view that the downturn in profitability is cyclical and will eventually reverse, Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, who ...

JEDDAH / Emirates Business The Islamic Development Bank (IDB), a multilateral development financing institution with 57 member countries as shareholders, is now fully delivering on its mandate to foster socio-economic development among its member countries, thanks in large part to the recent transformation of its core banking technology, using SAP. IDB supports the growing Islamic Finance, with a recent report ...

Bloomberg MYbank, the two-year-old Chinese online lender that already has 3.5 million small-business customers, plans to push deeper into a segment that’s long been shunned by the country’s largest banks. MYbank wants to capitalize on its links to billionaire Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. by offering loans to the more than 10 million smaller merchants that use the company’s ...

Bloomberg As global central banks turn increasingly hawkish, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda may have to start discussing an exit from its monetary stimulus program by the end of the year, according to Principal Global Investors (PGI), which manages more than $424 billion. Kuroda stood out from other central bankers at the ECB Forum in Portugal last ...

Bloomberg A decade has passed since the start of the financial crisis, but when it comes to handling struggling banks, the European Union still hasn’t moved on. Italy’s taxpayer-funded wind-down of Banca Popolare di Vicenza SpA and Veneto Banca SpA highlighted the patchwork of EU and national laws and guidelines that govern the funneling of public money to banks, despite ...

Bloomberg Unicaja Banco SA raised about 688 million euros ($783 million) in an initial public offering that turned into a test of confidence in Spanish banks after this month’s demise of a larger lender. Unicaja, based in the southern city of Malaga, priced the sale of 40.3 percent of its equity at 1.10 euros per share, the low end of ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc became the first foreign bank to win permission for a majority-owned securities joint venture in China, a structure some of its competitors have unsuccessfully lobbied to secure for several years. The London-based firm received approval to invest 918 million yuan ($135 million) for 51 percent of a venture with Qianhai Financial Holdings Co., the China Securities ...

Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG, which helped arrange the majority of the $2 billion in Mozambique state-backed loans that plunged the country’s economy into crisis, disputed that it received more than $160 million in fees for arranging the financing. The bank was responding to Kroll LLC’s audit report into the loans that said it and Russia’s VTB Bank PJSC were ...

Bloomberg The Dutch state will sell an additional 7 percent of ABN Amro Group NV, a stake worth about $1.7 billion at current prices, taking advantage of steady demand for European bank stocks as it progresses toward full privatization. About 65 million shares will be sold in an accelerated bookbuild, bringing the government’s controlling stake down to 63 percent, NLFI, ...