Banking

  Bloomberg TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. and its largest stakeholder, Toronto-Dominion Bank, agreed to buy Scottrade Financial Services Inc. for $4 billion, combining two of the largest online brokerages while expanding the U.S. operations of Canada’s second-largest lender. TD Ameritrade agreed to acquire Scottrade’s brokerage operations for about $2.7 billion. Toronto-Dominion, which owns about 42 percent of TD Ameritrade, will ...

  Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) expressed concern that some banks may take excessive risks to maintain profitability while the ability of others to lend could weaken following the introduction of its negative interest-rate policy. Banks are less able to make up for declining profitability of domestic lending because the areas that had supported earnings, such as low bad-loan ...

  Bloomberg China’s money market is showing increasing signs of a shortage of cash, with interest-rate swaps climbing to a six-month high and banks paying higher interest to obtain government funds. The cost of one-year swaps rose as much as four basis points to 2.67 percent in Shanghai, the most expensive since April 29, while the benchmark seven-day repurchase rate ...

  Bloomberg Nineteen US financial firms — including titans such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. as well as regional lenders and credit unions — have signed up for a new real-time payments network dubbed Zelle. The venture, replacing an existing system called clearXchange next year, will be accessible to more than ...

  Bloomberg The European Union is preparing a rewrite of international capital requirements as part of a growing effort to soften the blow of regulations on struggling banks. The European Commission will announce a sweeping plan as early as next month for enacting global standards including a requirement for lenders to have more stable funding to weather a future crisis. ...

  Bloomberg Bjorn Wahlroos, the chairman of Nordea Bank AB, confirmed he approached Dutch authorities about a possible merger with ABN Amro Group NV. While those talks didn’t lead to a combination of the two lenders, the Nordea chairman said a merger could have produced a “great bank,” during an interview with Finnish state broadcaster YLE. “It was in preliminary ...

  Bloomberg Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., has shied away from publicly backing a presidential candidate this year, saying his support could harm that person’s chances. Yet in an interview that will air on CNN’s “ Fareed Zakaria GPS,” Blankfein, asked if he personally supports and admires Democrat Hillary Clinton, said that he did. “I’m ...

  Bloomberg Banks in the UK will start relocating operations out of the country by year-end, months before formal talks to leave the European Union begin, as London looks set to lose access to the EU single market, the head of the British Bankers Association said in a newspaper commentary. International banks’ “hands are quivering over the relocate button,” Anthony ...

  Bloomberg Hong Kong’s stock market is suffering from a post-holiday hangover. The flood of Chinese money into the city before the mainland’s National Day celebrations in early October has slowed to a trickle since traders returned from the week-long break. Investors in Shanghai spent more than $8 billion on Hong Kong shares in September, the biggest monthly inflow through ...

  Bloomberg Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., Australia’s third-biggest bank by market value, is cutting about 30 jobs in its institutional banking unit. The affected positions are based in New York, London and Asia, and are mostly in customer relationship roles, ANZ Bank spokesman Stephen Ries said in an emailed statement. “We continue to reshape our network by ...