Banking

DUBAI / Reuters Saudi Arabian lender Alawwal Bank, 40 percent owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, has picked JPMorgan to advise it on a proposed merger with Saudi British Bank (SABB), sources familiar with the matter said. Senior management of SABB and Alawwal held talks with advisers to discuss the principle of the merger and timeframe for its completion, one ...

Bloomberg Commerzbank AG has sent out early retirement offers to about 3,000 employees, a first key step in the German lender’s move towards cutting 9,600 jobs over four years, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The offer entitles eligible employees born before 1962 to a 30,000-euro ($34,000) sweetener, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing internal ...

Bloomberg Mauritian banks are becoming beacons of growth and stability in sub-Saharan Africa. Unscathed by the vagaries of the oil price and unhindered by the political battles that have roiled some of their continental peers, the Indian Ocean island’s lenders have been bolstered by an economy growing faster than many of the mainland countries. The central bank expects the Mauritian ...

Bloomberg Saudi Arabia could attract tens of billions of dollars in foreign investments in the Arab world’s biggest stock market if it’s added to MSCI Inc.’s emerging-markets index, according to Deutsche Bank AG’s chief executive officer for the Middle East and Africa. Our “research anticipates a figure of up to $35 billion of inflows,” Dubai-based Jamal Al Kishi said in ...

Bloomberg Kuwait Finance House KSCP is in talks to buy Bahrain’s Ahli United Bank BSC, a person familiar with the matter said, in a deal that would create one of the Middle East’s largest Islamic lenders with about $85 billion of assets. KFH, as the lender is known, started discussions to acquire the Bahraini lender as well as its operations ...

Bloomberg Indonesia’s central bank said economic growth of 5.4 percent this year is too optimistic and the nation should aspire for higher credit ratings to catch up with Southeast Asian peers. “In our view, the 2017 growth rate should be higher than 2016,” Bank Indonesia Senior Deputy Governor Mirza Adityaswara said in an interview in Jakarta. “Maybe 5.4 percent is ...

Dubai / emirates business Noor Bank on Monday announced that it has become the first bank in the UAE to implement the Dubai font across internal platforms. Employees of the bank will apply the iconic font to all documents created in Microsoft Office programmes. The transition from Arial to the Dubai font is in line with Noor Bank’s vision of ...

Dubai / Emirates Business SWIFT announces on Sunday that Mashreq Bank has signed up for its global payments innovation (gpi) service, to become the first bank in the Middle East to join this international initiative. The bank will be joining forces with 100 leading banks globally. SWIFT gpi dramatically improves the customer experience in cross-border payments by increasing the speed, ...

Dubai / Emirates Business Noor Bank, a leading Shari’a-compliant bank in the UAE, announced that it joined the region’s prominent financial, legal and insurance institutions as a Gold Sponsor at the latest edition of the Bonds, Loans & Sukuk Middle East conference. Organised by GFC Media Group, the region’s largest finance and investment conference convenes high-profile issuers, investors, bankers, legal ...

Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. will pay bigger sign-on bonuses to some new brokers as competitors including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. seek to reduce recruitment inducements. The Wells Fargo Advisors unit plans to offer better pay packages to brokers who oversee the largest books of business as it seeks to woo more big producers, reports said. The ...