Banking

  Luxembourg / AFP The European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that Spanish banks must reimburse clients who had signed mortgage contracts that unfairly prevented them from benefiting from a steady drop in interest rates. The decision by the Luxembourg-based court caused shares in Spanish lenders to fall with small lender Liberbank leading losses, down over ten percent in ...

  Bloomberg Turkey’s central bank unexpectedly kept all of its three main interest rates unchanged, and said a “cautious monetary policy” would be maintained as it assesses the impact of a weaker lira on inflation. The lira reversed gains. The bank kept one-week repurchase, overnight lending and borrowing rates unchanged at 8 percent, 8.5 percent and 7.25 percent respectively, it ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business For the third consecutive year, Global Investor, the leading international publication specialising in asset management, named Barclays the ‘Wealth Manager of the Year’ in the Middle East. The award, which was announced during the 2016 Global Investor/ISF MENA Awards ceremony in Dubai, reflects Barclays’ long-standing position as a leader in the Wealth and Investment Management ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, the lender pulling back from some trading businesses, is beefing up its Asia-Pacific equity-derivatives unit as it looks to capitalize on expected demand for quantitative strategies from local investors. David Bruchet, formerly of Societe Generale SA, will join the German bank in Hong Kong as an index equity-derivatives trader at the end of January, said ...

  Bloomberg Qatari banks Masraf Al Rayan QSC, Barwa Bank QSC and International Bank of Qatar (IBQ) QSC are in talks on a three-way merger as consolidation accelerates across the Middle East’s banking industry. The potential combination would create the largest sharia-compliant bank in Qatar and the third largest such lender in the Middle East, with assets worth more than 160 ...

  Tokyo / AFP The Bank of Japan on Tuesday lifted its view of the economy for the first time in over a year, as the sliding yen boosts exports, offering some hope for Tokyo’s stuttering growth programme. Policymakers held fire on further stimulus and said they would maintain a plan to keep the yield on government 10-year bonds around ...

  London / AFP British bank Lloyds on Tuesday bought Bank of America’s UK credit card division MBNA for £1.9 billion in the first acquisition since its government bailout during the global financial crisis. The deal, worth $2.4 billion or 2.3 billion euros, will bolster the group’s position in Britain’s prime credit card market, Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) said in ...

  New York / AFP New York’s state bank regulator fined Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo $235 million for “sweeping violations” anti-money laundering laws and deliberately concealing information from bank examiners. The big Italian bank failed to flag questionable transactions and deviated from policies designed to root out wrongdoing, which “seriously (compromised) the security of the international financial system,” said Maria ...

  Bloomberg Malaysia’s ringgit touched its lowest level since the Asian financial crisis in 1998, as investors continue to sell down emerging-market assets and after a crackdown on currency speculators last month exacerbated outflows. The ringgit declined as much as 0.1 percent to 4.4805 per dollar, a level unseen since January 1998, according to prices from local banks compiled by ...

  Kiev / AFP Ukraine nationalised the country’s biggest bank in a bid to avert a financial meltdown in the war-scarred former Soviet state. The government moved to take over PrivatBank after months of rumours that the lender was heavily burdened by bad debts. PrivatBank controls one-third of the east European country’s deposits and even has branches in the Baltic ...