Banking

  MUSCAT / Reuters Oman’s central bank won’t automatically imitate last week’s interest rate hike by the US Federal Reserve, central bank executive president Hamood Sangour Al Zadjali said on Sunday. Oman is the only member of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council not to announce an official interest rate rise in the wake of the Fed’s 0.25 percentage point increase. ...

  Emirates Business Saxo Bank, the online multi-asset trading and investment specialist, announces that it is launching a combination order ticket for all clients trading contract options. The combination order ticket will enable clients to deploy multi-legged option strategies by simultaneously placing orders to buy and/or sell different options from the same order ticket. Georgio Stoev, Futures and Listed Options ...

Reykjavik / AFP Iceland’s central bank on Wednesday shaved its key interest rate by a quarter of a point to 5.0 percent, citing the krona’s appreciation and political uncertainty following the country’s October elections. Gross domestic product, business investment growth and export growth had all been stronger than projected for the first nine months of the year, the bank noted. ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. is looking to sell structured notes online and is building a website that will help retail brokers offer the securities, according to people with knowledge of the matter, as the largest US bank looks to cut its costs for selling bonds. The bank plans to launch its site as soon as the middle of next ...

  Bloomberg Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA received regulatory approval to extend and expand a debt-for-equity swap in a last-ditch effort to raise 5 billion euros ($5.2 billion) privately and avoid a state rescue. The exchange offer will involve about 4.5 billion euros of Tier 1 and Tier 2 securities and will run until 2 p.m. on December ...

  Bloomberg Prudential Financial Inc. said the relationship with Wells Fargo & Co. that led to a whistle-blower lawsuit and state probes over suspected sales abuses generated a tiny fraction of the life insurer’s revenue. “We do not gauge the importance of this matter in financial terms, but for purposes of this call, it’s probably useful to put some financial ...

  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 ...