Banking

  Bloomberg China International Capital Corp., the bank that has brought some of the country’s biggest state-owned firms to market, agreed to buy China Investment Securities Co. to gain a foothold in the retail-brokerage business. CICC, known as the Goldman Sachs of China, will acquire the brokerage from Central Huijin Investment Ltd. for 16.7 billion yuan ($2.5 billion), the Beijing-based ...

  Bloomberg China’s third-largest lender tried to obscure the trail of dollar transactions by Russian, Chinese and Middle Eastern clients and attempted to silence a compliance officer who raised alarms about it, according to New York’s banking regulator. State-controlled Agricultural Bank of China was ordered to pay a $215 million penalty and install an independent monitor for 18 months to ...

  Bloomberg ING Group NV, the largest Dutch lender, climbed the most in three months in Amsterdam trading after third-quarter profit beat estimates. ING jumped as much as 4.2 percent in Amsterdam trading, the biggest gain since Aug. 3, and was priced at 12.02 euros as of 9:44 a.m. Net income rose 22 percent in the quarter as investment gains ...

  Paris/ AFP French bank Societe Generale served investors a pleasant surprise with third-quarter results, sending its shares soaring. Although falling by 2.4 percent to 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion), net profit still came in well above analysts’ forecasts of 888 million euros according to Factset, a data provider. Shares in Societe Generale, France’s third largest bank after BNP Paribas ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG plans to move some workers from a City of London office building to the Canary Wharf district and sublease the excess space, according to two people familiar with the plan. The lender will shift at least half of the back-office staff from the Appold Street property to the Docklands office by the end of this ...

  Bloomberg Commerzbank AG said it expects to post a full-year profit after costs tied to Chief Executive Officer Martin Zielke’s overhaul pushed Germany’s second-largest lender into a third-quarter loss. The net loss of 288 million euros ($319 million) compares with a profit of 235 million euros a year earlier, the Frankfurt-based company said in a statement on Friday. Analysts ...

  Cairo / AFP Egypt floated the country’s pound on Thursday as part of a raft of reforms, after a dollar crunch and exorbitant black market trade threatened to grind some imports to a halt. The government of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi is rolling out an austerity programme and seeking billions in support from abroad in order to meet ...

  Bloomberg BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager, said that India is the biggest opportunity for the firm within Asia as it expands lending where banks fear to tread. The asset manager is pushing into private credit in the region as unprecedented monetary easing by central banks has weighed on bond market rates. Almost $10 trillion of securities from ...

  Zurich/ AFP Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-biggest bank, said on Thursday it defied market expectations by posting a profit amid a vast cost cutting programme. Net earnings came in at 41 million Swiss francs (38 million euros, $42 million), a massive decline of 95 percent from the same quarter last year. But the bank still did better than analysts had ...

  Bloomberg After scaling back Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.’s Asian businesses, Chief Executive Officer Shayne Elliott is now turning his attention closer to home. The country’s third-biggest bank is exploring “a range” of possible options for its Australian wealth business, it said on Thursday as it announced its its lowest full-year earnings since 2011. That may include ...