Banking

  Barcelona / AFP Barcelona’s leftwing city council charged three Spanish banks over a million euros in fines for keeping four apartments empty for more than two years. The city issued a fine of 315,000 euros ($335,000) for each of the empty apartments, which the banks have had on their books for over two years, and which they have refused ...

  Bloomberg Malayan Banking Bhd. is challenging CIMB Group Holdings Bhd.’s nine-year reign as the top arranger in the world’s largest Islamic bond market. Malaysia’s biggest lender has managed 15.3 billion ringgit ($3.5 billion) of sukuk offerings in the nation in 2016, data compiled by Bloomberg show. It had a 27 percent market share versus 22 percent for CIMB. Maybank ...

  Bloomberg RHB Bank Bhd., Malaysia’s fourth-biggest lender by assets, hired former Standard Chartered Plc banker Goh Ken-Yi to head client coverage in its Singapore securities unit, people with knowledge of the matter said. The banker started working this week at RHB Securities Singapore Pte, according to the people. He was most recently a managing director in charge of commercial ...

  Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. and Bain Capital’s credit investment arm are considering bids for about 1 billion euros ($1.06 billion) of non-performing assets from Banco Popular Espanol SA as the Spanish lender accelerates efforts to clean up its balance sheet, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Negotiations are ongoing, and an agreement may be reached in ...

  Bloomberg China’s central bank raised its yuan fixing for the first time in 13 days as the dollar’s ascent eased, reinforcing speculation that policy makers are prepared to step up measures to slow the currency’s declines. The People’s Bank of China strengthened its daily reference rate by 0.3 percent to 6.8779 per dollar, ending a 12-day decline that took ...

  Bloomberg SBM Holdings Ltd., Mauritius’s second-biggest lender, said it’s acquiring Fidelity Commercial Bank Ltd. of Kenya to kick off an expansion in East Africa that will target four more countries. The bank is buying FCB’s entire share capital for 100 shillings and injecting 1.46 billion shillings ($14.3 million) of new capital, Port Louis-based SBM said in a statement on ...

  Bloomberg Mario Draghi may be first among equals in the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, but he certainly isn’t the best paid. The central bank governors of Belgium, Italy and Germany make more than the ECB president’s annual 386,000 euros ($409,400), data compiled by Bloomberg show. Belgium’s Jan Smets took the crown with about 480,000 euros, almost six times ...

  Bloomberg Global banking regulators said US lenders present a bigger risk to the financial system than last year and should face stiffer capital requirements to ward off threats. Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. all face higher capital surcharges after they rose in the Financial Stability Board’s latest ranking of the most systemically important ...

  Lisbon / AFP Chinese conglomerate Fosun will become the biggest shareholder in the ailing BCP, Portugal’s biggest private bank, by agreeing to buy a 16.7 percent stake, the two sides said Sunday. Fosun is paying nearly 175 million euros ($185 million) via a capital increase after an agreement reached on Friday. Portugal’s banking sector is saddled with debt and ...

  Bloomberg Ghana’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time in more than five years after inflation slowed to the lowest rate since 2014. The Bank of Ghana cut the rate by 50 basis points to 25.5 percent, Governor Abdul Nashiru Issahaku told reporters on Monday in the capital, Accra. Five of the six economists in ...