Banking

  DUBAI / WAM The Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) issued a certificate completing the merger of the First Gulf Bank (FGB) and the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD). The SCA has set March 30 as the last date for trading the respective shares of the two banks ahead of starting trading of new shares on Abu Dhabi Securities ...

  Bloomberg This week’s squeeze in Chinese money markets is proving especially painful for the country’s shadow banks. While interbank borrowing rates have climbed across the board, the surge has been unusually steep for non-bank institutions, including securities companies and investment firms. They’re now paying what amounts to a record premium for short-term funds relative to large Chinese banks, according ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG is expected to be fined by the Federal Reserve and New York’s Department of Financial Services for its conduct in the foreign exchange market, a person familiar with the matter said. The German lender said that the US Justice Department had closed a criminal inquiry into its currency-trading activities without action. But regulators are in ...

  Bloomberg With the management and shareholders of one of Russia’s biggest regional lenders deep in unsuccessful talks with the central bank about how to save it from collapse last November, an obscure company in Dublin sold $60 million of bonds on its behalf. The amount wasn’t nearly enough to cover the estimated 97 billion ruble ($1.6 billion) hole in ...

  NEW YORK / AP Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan said the company could need several more months to resolve customer damage tied to its massive sales practices scandal, such as figuring out if people had trouble getting approved for other loans because of the fake accounts bank employees opened. Sloan reiterated what he has said since becoming CEO in ...

  Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. reduced chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein’s annual compensation 27%, awarding him $22 million for 2016 after eliminating a long-term incentive award. Blankfein, 62, received $16 million in performance shares and a $4 million cash bonus, in addition to his $2 million salary, the New York-based firm said Friday in its annual proxy filing. Unlike ...

  LONDON / Reuters Former Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond marked a return to investment banking in Britain with a Qatari-backed takeover of stockbroker Panmure Gordon, one of the oldest names in the City of London. Diamond, who left Barclays in 2012 during the Libor interest rate-rigging scandal, is making the move through his private equity firm Atlas Merchant Capital, ...

  Bloomberg The S&P 500 Index could reach 2,600 as the global economy improves and corporate earnings climb, said Keith Banks, president of Bank of America Corp.’s (BofA) US Trust unit. “It’s natural to get nervous when you’ve seen the run that we’ve seen, but what I would bring things back to are underlying fundamentals,” Banks said in an interview ...

  DOHA / Reuters Qatar’s central bank said that it raised its overnight lending rate by 25 basis points to 5.0 percent after the U.S. Federal Reserve tightened policy by a similar margin. The central bank also increased its overnight deposit rate by 25 bps to 1.25 percent. However, the central bank reduced banks’ reserve requirement — the amount of ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG is weighing the sale of its Indian retail businesses as the German lender considers asset disposals to help boost capital levels, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The bank is also considering selling retail operations in European countries including Spain, the people said, asking not to be identified as the plans aren’t public. ...