Banking

  Bloomberg Urjit Patel will take over as India’s central bank chief at a time when monetary policy decision-making is being overhauled and an estimated $20 billion is set to flow out of the country. Patel is currently deputy governor in charge of monetary policy and has been a key architect of the central bank’s shift to a consumer-price-based inflation ...

  LONDON / AP Royal Bank of Scotland says it will charge some corporate customers for accepting their deposits — the first U.K. bank to impose so-called negative interest rates after the Bank of England slashed borrowing costs to spur investment. RBS, bailed out by taxpayers during the financial crisis, says negative interest will apply only to the overnight rate ...

  Bloomberg Bank of East Asia Ltd., (BEA) the Hong Kong lender facing pressure from Paul Singer’s Elliott Management, said first-half profit dropped 38 percent as China’s slowing economy dragged on lending and caused loan impairments to surge. The shares fell the most in two weeks. Net income fell to HK$2.1 billion ($270 million) for the six months ended June ...

  Singapore / Bloomberg Rabobank Groep, the second-largest Dutch bank by assets, said first-half profit fell 39 percent, hurt by legal costs and restructuring expenses. Net income dropped to 924 million euros ($1 billion) from 1.5 billion euros a year earlier, the closely held bank said in a statement on Thursday. The lender increased provisions by 514 million euros to ...

  Bloomberg Banco Santander SA, Spain’s biggest bank, hired Credit Suisse Group AG to advise on its negotiations to buy Citigroup Inc.’s retail assets in Brazil, people with knowledge of the matter said. Santander, whose Brazil unit generates about 19 percent of the Madrid-based company’s revenue, also hired a Lazard Ltd. venture in Argentina to advise on its proposal to ...

  Bloomberg Singapore plans to reduce the role of cash and checks in its economy by encouraging banks to switch to digital payments, according to the head of the country’s central bank. “For consumers, the use of cash for daily payments is high,” Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said at a financial technology conference. “For ...

  Hong Kong / Bloomberg Free rice cookers and suitcases were among the special deals that tempted Chiu Wing-suet into accumulating her 20 credit cards, many of which are crammed into her wallet. She’s unlikely to accept any more such offers. “I’ve come to realize that most of my cards are useless,” said the 30-year-old Hong Kong nurse. “I basically ...

  Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is telling clients not to fret about a sharp selloff in the dollar as the Federal Reserve re-examines the path of interest rates. The market is already far more dovish than policy makers, the bank says. The greenback weakened for a second week after minutes of the Fed’s July meeting showed officials are divided ...

  Bloomberg There is “sufficient chance” the Bank of Japan will add to its unprecedented easing at next month’s policy meeting, central bank Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said in an interview published Saturday in the Sankei newspaper. The BOJ won’t hesitate to act based on discussions on the results of a comprehensive review at its September 20-21 board meeting, Kuroda said ...

  Bloomberg The whistle-blower’s dilemma is usually easy to understand, if hard to solve. Choose the ethically honest path and you face ostracism and the sack; head down the less honest route and you may have more job security and better promotion prospects. Regulators have used a stick and carrot to try to solve this. Whack banks with a fine ...