Banking

  Bloomberg Credit Agricole SA reported a 71 percent drop in first-quarter profit, hurt by a decline in consumer lending margins and trading revenue as the bank began a reorganisation to streamline its capital structure. Net income declined to €227 million ($259 million) from €784 million a year earlier, Credit Agricole, based near Paris, said in a statement on Thursday. ...

  Reuters Bahrain-based Al Baraka Banking Group will establish a banking unit in Morocco once it receives approval from local authorities, the Islamic lender said in a statement, adding it aimed to launch the new business soon. The bank, which has operations across the Middle East, Asia and Africa, said entry to the Morocco market would significantly help diversify assets ...

  BLOOMBERG Nations that have adopted a negative interest rate policy to spur economic growth face the possibility of weakening their banks, according to Arunma Oteh, vice president and treasurer of the World Bank. “We still have a global economy that is very fragile,” Oteh said in an interview in Tokyo. “What you find where you have had the expansionary ...

  Lagos / AFP Nigeria’s central bank said it was investigating some banks in connection with slush funds allegedly set up by a former oil minister to rig last year’s elections. The Central Bank of Nigeria said it was “fully aware and indeed a part of the ongoing investigation of certain financial transactions in some banks by law enforcement authorities”. ...

BAGHDAD / Reuters Iraq has raised the interest rate on a local bond issue worth 1.5 trillion Iraqi dinars ($1.3 billion) to boost sales, central bank spokesman Aycar Jabbar recently said. The central bank has increased the rate to 8 percent from the 6 percent offered on March 15, when the two-year bonds went on sale, he told. All those ...

  Bloomberg ABN Amro Group NV reported a 13 percent decline in profit after its first full quarter as a listed company coincided with a market rout, crimping revenue from fees and commissions, and said it is considering additional cost cuts. Net income fell to €475 million ($541 million) from €543 million a year ago, the state-controlled Dutch lender said ...

Bloomberg While central bankers in Japan, Europe and US have struggled in recent years to stoke credit growth even as they grew their balance sheets to unprecedented size, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is succeeding, with a very different approach. For all the Communist Party’s rhetoric about giving a decisive role to markets, China’s financial system remains dominated by ...

  Bloomberg A group of Gol Linhas Aereas SA’s bondholders views the Brazilian airline’s debt restructuring proposal as unfair and has hired US investment bank Houlihan Lokey Inc. to negotiate with the company, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. The investor group, representing owners of more than 20 percent of Gol’s dollar notes, sees the plan ...

  Milan / BLOOMBERG Unicredit, Italy’s biggest bank by assets, said that net profit fell around a fifth at the start of the year due to restructuring costs in Italy and Austria. The charges — to the tune of some 230 million euros – weighed on the bank’s net profit in the first quarter, which came to 406 million euros ...

  Bloomberg ING Groep NV, the biggest Dutch lender, said first-quarter profit declined 29 percent on growing regulatory expenses and a loss at its financial-markets division. Net income dropped to 1.26 billion euros ($1.43 billion) from 1.77 billion euros a year earlier, the Amsterdam-based bank said in a statement. That compares with 1.24 billion euros, the average of seven analyst ...