Banking

  Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. charged some homebuyers fees to extend promised interest rates when the bank failed to process their mortgage applications on time, ProPublica reported, citing four former employees from the Los Angeles area. The practice, apparently limited to that region, broke with the company’s policy of eating the fees when it was at fault for delays, ...

  Bloomberg BlackRock Inc. yanked custody services from State Street Corp. on more than $1 trillion in client assets as the asset manager seeks to cut costs by putting pressure on vendors. The move of assets to JPMorgan Chase & Co. is part of BlackRock’s strategy to exact lower fees, according to a person familiar with the matter. The bank ...

  Bloomberg Thailand is due to roll out a national digital-payment system that levies much smaller transaction fees than the nation’s banks. Yet lenders expect the network to help rather than hinder them financially. Commercial banks could save some 77 billion baht ($2.18 billion) in the next 10 years as the so-called PromptPay service curbs the use of cash, according ...

  Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co., the lender struggling to recover from a scandal involving bogus customer accounts, is eliminating its practice of giving retail bankers a day’s notice before internal inspectors visit a branch. The bank’s “branch control review process has evolved over the years to consist of electronic, centralized documents that are reviewed outside and in advance of ...

  Bloomberg Bank of Montreal (BMO) expects to capture a bigger share of US dealmaking in 2017 by winning more mandates for advising on takeovers and managing stock sales, building off its most successful year in US capital markets. “In a challenging year in ’16 we managed to take market share,” Peter Myers, 57, head of US investment and corporate ...

  Bloomberg Banco Santander SA Chairman Ana Botin said she expects growth in all of the lenders’ markets in 2017 after Spain’s largest bank reported fourth-quarter profit that beat estimates. The shares jumped. Net income rose to 1.6 billion euros ($1.72 billion) compared with 25 million euros a year earlier when profit was hit by charges, including provisions for the ...

  Bloomberg Intesa Sanpaolo SpA said it’s considering a merger with Assicurazioni Generali SpA, a deal that would reshape Italy’s financial industry by combining its second-biggest bank with the largest insurer. “Possible industrial combinations with Assicurazioni Generali are currently being examined by the bank’s management,” Intesa said in a statement. “The bank is interested in industrial growth in the areas ...

  Bloomberg China’s central bank increased the interest rates on medium-term loans that it uses to manage liquidity, a move analysts say signals its intent to keep a tight rein on leverage in the financial system. The one year Medium-term Lending Facility (MLF) rate was raised to 3.1 percent from 3 percent and the six-month rate to 2.95 percent from ...

  Bloomberg China should tighten monetary policy as signs of overheating emerge amid quickening inflation, according to the top-ranked forecaster for the nation’s economy. With policy makers torn between reining in price gains and stabilizing growth, corporate lending has become too cheap, said Song Yu, chief China economist at Beijing Gao Hua Securities Co. The real interest rate for companies ...

  Bloomberg Lloyds Banking Group Plc was hit by a cyber attack that disrupted online services for customers two weeks ago, a person with knowledge of the matter said, amid mounting concern over the threat hackers pose to major banks. Britain’s largest mortgage lender was targeted by a denial-of-service attack, which aims to cripple an online system by flooding it ...