Banking

  AFP Australia’s central bank kept interest rates at a record low on Tuesday in the first meeting for newly-minted chief Philip Lowe, amid solid domestic growth and signs that commodity prices have passed their trough. Australian growth has remained robust despite the economy’s uneven transition away from mining-driven expansion, but a recent run of sluggish inflation figures drove the ...

  AFP India’s central bank cut interest rates to a six-year low on Tuesday, as the International Monetary Fund predicted the Asian giant would maintain its position as the world’s fastest-growing major economy. The rate decision was expected to please Narendra Modi’s government who had become frustrated at the pace with which recently-departed Reserve Bank of India chief Raghuram Rajan ...

  Bloomberg Laurentian Bank of Canada, claiming traditional banking is becoming “obsolete,” will merge 50 branches and eliminate about 300 positions in the next 18 months as part of a restructuring. Laurentian must evolve to meet the changing needs of customers, who have reduced branch visits, the Montreal-based lender said Wednesday in a statement. Increased economic and regulatory hurdles, along ...

  Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG is seeking to secure a key banking license in Saudi Arabia as part of plans to expand in the kingdom. The Zurich-based bank, which has a securities and equities business in the country, is in talks with the central bank for an onshore license, Iqbal Khan, head of the bank’s international wealth-management business, said ...

  MANILA / AP The Asian Development Bank signed an agreement with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) on a risk-transfer scheme under which SIDA will guarantee $155 million out of ADB’s $455 million basket of five loans to India — a first for a sovereign loan portfolio for any multilateral development bank, the ADB announced on Monday. The ...

  BRUSSELS / AP Dutch banking group ING said on Monday that it is slashing 7,000 jobs in Belgium and the Netherlands as the company focuses on online services in the face of growing competition. ING said in a statement that some 3,500 full-time jobs would disappear in Belgium by 2021 and 2,300 in the Netherlands. Almost 1,000 jobs would ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business UAE banks are rapidly adopting global best practices in securing online bank accounts and digital payments, industry experts commented today on a new report. Automation of security is the most frequently deployed digital transformation initiative among banks in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, according to the recent IDC report, “The Digital Ready Bank”. When ...

  Bloomberg The Bank of England (BoE) will run two stress tests on the country’s biggest lenders next year, an annual assessment of risks from the financial cycle and an “exploratory” scenario geared to “emerging or latent threats” to financial stability. The central bank will publish the two scenarios in the first quarter of next year. The firms participating in ...

Bloomberg A “superstar” Barclays Plc trader fired amid the foreign-exchange market manipulation scandal lost his unfair dismissal case in London, three weeks after regulators banned him from the U.S. banking industry. The bank took “appropriate actions in light of” Chris Ashton’s “gross misconduct,” a London employment tribunal judge said in a Sept. 19 ruling. The decision is a rare complete ...

  Bloomberg Lloyds Banking Group Plc, Britain’s largest mortgage lender, may take a 1.6 billion-pound ($2.1 billion) charge in third-quarter earnings to cover a pension deficit and customer compensation, according to analysts. The London-based bank may set aside 800 million pounds to cover its pension fund liabilities and a similar amount for customers who were wrongly sold payment protection insurance, ...