Banking

  Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. is emerging as a winner in the fight for corporate clients and investment-banking fees in Brazil as some of its competitors retreat. The US firm turned in its best showing ever last year in the South American nation, raking in more fees from merger-and-acquisition advising and debt and equity underwriting than any company except ...

  Bloomberg China is increasingly managing the flow of credit with more finely-tuned instruments than its old method of changing how much of their deposits lenders must keep locked away. Banks’ required reserve requirements haven’t changed for almost a year. Instead, the central bank has used short-term lending channels to add almost six times as much funding than would have ...

  Bloomberg Australian banks have ‘appreciably improved’ their mortgage-lending standards, the nation’s regulator said, as it left the amount of additional capital banks are required to hold as a buffer against the build-up of credit risk at zero. The pace of lending to property investors is currently at around half of the regulator’s recommended levels, and higher-risk mortgages had fallen, ...

  Bloomberg Finance executives say they are preparing for the worst on Brexit as Prime Minister Theresa May signaled she plans to pull the UK out of the European single market. “If you don’t know where you are going, you have to plan for the worst and execute faster,” HSBC Holdings Plc Chairman Douglas Flint said in a speech at ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Qatar National Bank (QNB) is broadening its horizons in Southeast Asia after the Gulf’s largest lender reported 8.3 percent rise in fourth-quarter net profit, according to reports. It follows a year in which the bank cemented its position as the largest lender in the Middle East and Africa by assets after completing the 2.7 billion euro ...

  Bloomberg Polish bank shares tumbled on Monday as the country’s watchdogs are seeking to impose higher capital requirements aimed at encouraging lenders to ditch foreign-currency home loans. The WIG Bank gauge slumped 1.7 percent as of 11:36 a.m. in Warsaw, led by MBank SA and Bank Millennium SA, sliding from a one-year high reached last week. Lenders should lift ...

  Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. upgraded its assessment of the Indonesian stock market, reversing an earlier bearish call that prompted Jakarta to stop doing business with the U.S. bank. The bank’s analysts raised their ‘tactical’ view of Indonesian equities one level to “neutral” in a report on Monday, saying volatility in emerging-market bonds following Donald Trump’s US election victory ...

  Bloomberg Financial institutions in the Asia-Pacific region will be more inclined to hire technology specialists this year than investment bankers as they enhance product offerings and upgrade their systems, according to a survey by Options Group Inc. Among regional financial-services managers, 40 percent say they expect to increase their headcount for information technology-related roles this year, according to a ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Oman’s Bank Dhofar, the second-largest lender in the sultanate by assets, posted a 19.6 percent fall in fourth-quarter net profit, according to Reuters calculations. The bank reports a net profit of 10.75 million rials ($27.95 million) in the three months to Dec. 31, compared to 13.37 million rials in the same period of 2015. Net loans ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Bank Muscat, Oman’s largest lender, posted a 1.3 percent increase in fourth-quarter net profit on Sunday, according to Reuters calculations, in line with analysts’ estimates. The bank made a profit of 39.7 million rials ($103.2 million) in the three-month period ending Dec. 31, up from 39.2 million rials a year earlier. Bank Muscat didn’t disclose a ...