Banking

BLOOMBERG National Australia Bank (NAB) is planning to close its Hong Kong office and consolidate operations into mainland China, Singapore and Japan. The closure of the office will take place over the next 18 months, Krista Baetens, a Singapore-based NAB executive, said in a statement. The Australian Financial Review earlier reported the decision, saying the office houses about 50 staff ...

BLOOMBERG Laurentian Bank of Canada ended its strategic review without finding a buyer and plans to carry on as an independent firm with a slimmer management team. The company’s shares plunged. The Canadian bank announced in July it was examining its options. It hired JPMorgan Chase & Co to run the process and considered a number of possibilities, including a ...

BLOOMBERG Barclays Plc is preparing to cut hundreds of jobs as soon as next week as the firm looks to trim costs amid quieter markets. The lender is planning to dismiss about 5% of client-facing staff in the trading division as well as some dealmakers globally as part of the cuts, according to people familiar with the matter. Separately, the ...

BLOOMBERG Wells Fargo & Co’s $1 billion settlement of a shareholder lawsuit over unauthorised customer accounts was approved by a federal judge, bringing the total amount the bank has agreed to pay to resolve claims over the scandal to nearly $5 billion. US District Judge Jennifer L Rochon authorised the agreement following a hearing in New York, more than three ...

 BLOOMBERG The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and China have a “strong partnership,” the organisation’s chief, Kristalina Georgieva, said as she wrapped a visit to the biggest lender for many developing economies and a key player in talks about their debt and financial stability. “In a world where so many countries are vulnerable to the impact of the Covid and world ...

BLOOMBERG China intensified efforts to stimulate the economy and support its currency, as investor concerns over the growth outlook persist. The central bank will trim the amount of foreign currency deposits banks are required to hold as reserves for the first time this year, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said. The move came hours after authorities announced fresh stimulus ...

BLOOMBERG Toronto-Dominion (TD) Bank is feeling the impact of costlier deposits, which squeezed margins and contributed to the lowest profitability for its US business in more than a year. Canada’s second-largest bank saw US retail-banking earnings drop to C$1.38 billion ($1.02 billion) on an adjusted basis in the fiscal third quarter, a 6% decline from a year earlier. The bank’s ...

BLOOMBERG Indian central bank’s policy to keep the rupee stable at weaker levels may make the currency vulnerable to “speculative attacks” in case of large risk events, according to Australia & New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) . Policymakers are focused on bolstering manufacturing and exports, but it’s not without costs, economists Dhiraj Nim and Sanjay Mathur wrote in a note. ...

BLOOMBERG HSBC Holdings Plc has hired Alex Hong from Evercore Inc to lead the bank’s dealmaking efforts in Singapore. Hong, who has been at Evercore for almost a decade, is set to join HSBC in September, a spokesperson for the UK lender confirmed in response to a Bloomberg News query. He will report to Sandeep Pahwa, head of investment banking ...

BLOOMBERG The recent selloff in crypto markets is likely near an end, with long-position liquidations “largely behind us,” according to a research report by JPMorgan Chase & Co. The fading of some positive legal and regulatory news induced a wave of selling in recent weeks that is “still reverberating,” though the unwinding appears to be at its end phase, based ...