Banking

  Bloomberg National Australia Bank Ltd., the country’s fourth-largest lender, has written to 60,000 customers to notify them it erroneously sent details about the establishment of their accounts to an incorrect e-mail address. The e-mail included customer information such as names, e-mail addresses and account numbers, though didn’t include any passwords, Peter Coad, NAB executive general manager for international branches, ...

  Moscow / AFP Russia’s central bank held its key interest rate steady at 10 percent, opting to keep inflation in check rather than help jolt the economy out of recession. Inflation risks have subsided and “our medium-term vision has not changed” since the bank last cut the rate in September by half a percentage point, said central bank chief ...

  Bloomberg After years spent clamping down on risky behaviour at banks and punishing them for past misdeeds, Europe’s regulators have awoken to a new worry: lenders aren’t making enough money. Shrinking profitability has become a “concern for financial stability” because it may reduce banks’ ability to recover from shocks by generating capital or selling stock, Bank of England (BoE) ...

  Bloomberg Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc is seeking to sell a smaller chunk of its Williams & Glyn consumer-banking unit after failing to draw any offers for the entire operation, a person with knowledge of the matter said. The UK government, which own 72 percent of RBS, is seeking European Union approval for the sale of a smaller ...

  Seoul / AFP South Korea held its key interest rate unchanged on Thursday, despite an earlier US hike, as an ongoing political crisis tightened the reins on an already-slowing economy. In a move widely expected by analysts, the central Bank of Korea held its benchmark rate at its record-low of 1.25 percent for the sixth straight month. South Korea ...

  Frankfurt am Main / AFP Eurozone banks increased uptake of zero-interest loans from the European Central Bank in December, data showed on Thursday, as part of a lending scheme to ease access to credit for households and businesses. Banks borrowed 62.2 billion euros ($65.1 billion) in total, compared with September’s figure of 45.3 billion. Subtracting some 14.2 billion euros ...

Brussels / Reuters Italy’s banking problems can be solved and the EU will do everything to help, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said, dismissing fears of something akin to the euro crisis. New Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni has said his government was prepared to come to the aid of the country’s third largest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena ...

  Jeddah / Emirates Business Deutsche Bank’s 2017 Market Outlook conference, titled ‘Global and Regional Investment Perspectives 2017’, the third event of its kind for Deutsche Bank in Saudi Arabia, opened at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Jeddah-Marina. The conference explored pressing macro issues affecting economies, capital markets, companies, family offices and individual investors around the Middle East & North ...

  Bloomberg Russia’s biggest bank is paying up to keep the nation’s best tech talent from emigrating to Silicon Valley. To analyze 135 million customers, it needs the power of big data. Sberbank PJSC, which holds 46 percent of Russian retail deposits, says it’s luring experts in the field with some of the highest salaries at the state-owned lender, paying ...

  Washington / AFP US banking regulators said they are prohibiting Wells Fargo from opening new international branches until it fixes continuing deficiencies in its bankruptcy plan. The so-called ‘living will’ is required of all large US banks to ensure that in the event they need to declare bankruptcy, they can be dismantled in an orderly fashion without the kind ...