Banking

Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG, the Swiss lender struggling to improve performance at its stock-trading unit, replaced one of the business’s top European bankers with a senior executive from Deutsche Bank AG. Stuart McGuire, who runs Deutsche Bank’s client-execution strategy for equities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, will replace Daniel Kaye as Credit Suisse’s head of cash-equities trading ...

Bloomberg The largest bank in Azerbaijan has halted its foreign debt payments and will start restructuring talks with creditors after a currency crisis in the Caspian Sea nation drove the lender to the brink of collapse. Under a restructuring plan, the International Bank of Azerbaijan said its “designated financial indebtedness” was at $3.3 billion as of April 18. It missed ...

Bloomberg Credit Agricole SA profited from low rates in the first quarter as large clients tapped the bond market and mortgage refinancing led to a surge in fees. Capital-markets revenue rose 17 percent, with ‘buoyant activity’ in fixed-income, foreign-exchange and credit trading, the Paris-based bank said in a statement on Thursday. Net income jumped to 845 million euros ($918 million) ...

Dubai / Emirates Business Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) Dubai Branch holds a grand ceremony in celebration of its opening and designation as the RMB clearing bank in the UAE. The Dubai Branch is ABC’s first RMB clearing bank designated by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and its second branch in the Middle East after the DIFC Branch. The ...

Bloomberg UniCredit SpA bounced back from a balance-sheet cleanup and a record share sale to deliver first-quarter profit that exceeded analysts’ estimates. The shares climbed as much as 5.4 percent. Net income more than doubled to 907 million euros ($986 million) from 406 million euros a year earlier, lifted by higher revenue and lower costs and provisions, the Milan-based bank ...

Bloomberg Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. agreed to buy National Australia Bank (NAB) Ltd.’s wealth management business in Singapore and Hong Kong, in the latest move by a Singapore lender to bolster operations serving Asia’s rich. OCBC said the business it’s buying is made up of a mortgage portfolio of about $1.7 billion and deposits of some $3.05 billion, according to a ...

Bloomberg CIMB Group Holdings Bhd. hired seven people recently at its private bank in Singapore, according to a person familiar with the matter, as it seeks to become one of the top 20 Asian players in the sector. Five of the hires have already started and the remaining two will join by September, said the person, who asked not to ...

Bloomberg Barclays Plc’s Jes Staley said he needs another six to 18 months before the bank can generate an acceptable return for investors, spelling out for the first time how long his strategy should take to bear fruit. “The group’s statutory return on equity is 9 percent, and we want to get that to 11 percent — I think we ...

  Bloomberg ING Groep NV Chief Executive Officer Ralph Hamers’s international expansion is helping the biggest Dutch lender boost profits. Net core lending increased by 5.7 billion euros ($6.2 billion) in the first quarter, as strong growth in nations including Germany more than offset a drop in Dutch consumer lending, the Amsterdam-based bank said in a statement on Wednesday. Loan ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business Egyptian banks are lifting restrictions on customers’ overseas credit card purchases, the latest indication that a foreign-currency crunch that crippled the economy is easing. State-run Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-biggest lender, is removing curbs imposed last year on purchases, while keeping limits on foreign-currency cash withdrawals, the official Middle East News Agency reported on Tuesday, without ...