Banking

  Bloomberg Eight years after the financial crisis, Europe’s biggest investment banks are holding illiquid assets amounting to more than half their combined shareholders’ equity, underlining concerns about capital. Deutsche Bank AG, Credit Suisse Group AG and Barclays Plc say their hardest-to-value securities — known as Level 3 assets — were worth $102.5 billion at the end of June. These ...

  Bloomberg Here’s an irony: US regulators looking to avoid bailouts of too-big-to-fail banks have passed so many rules that regional and local lenders are combining to stomach the costs. The result: Banks are bulking up. Mergers and acquisitions by US banks surged last year to about $18 billion, the highest level since 2009. This year, firms are set to ...

  Bloomberg Brazilian banks are charging more for everything from checkbooks to credit cards to help cover losses on bad loans, pushing the gap between bank-service fees and the nation’s inflation rate to the highest in more than four years. Prices for bank services, which have been rising faster than the benchmark inflation rate since August 2015, climbed 11.5 percent ...

  Bloomberg Nomura Holdings Inc. plans to hire bankers in the US, resuming a push to boost investment-banking business in a market that remains a priority for Japan’s biggest brokerage following a round of cost cuts. The Tokyo-based firm anticipates rising volumes of mergers and stock offerings in the U.S., said Chief Operating Officer Tetsu Ozaki, who is seeking bankers ...

  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 ...