Banking

  Cairo / Reuters National Bank of Egypt (NBE), the country’s largest state bank, sold 1.5 billion Egyptian pounds ($169 million) worth of special certificates that were launched in March to attract foreign currency into the banking system, its deputy chairman said. NBE was one of three state banks to launch the certificates on March 14, the day Egypt’s central ...

Milan / AFP Banco Popolare and Banca Popolare di Milano (BPM) said they would shed seven percent of their 25,000 staff as they merge to create Italy’s third-largest bank by assets. The 1,800 jobs are to be cut via voluntary departures, and 800 other employees will be reassigned to other jobs. The number of branches will be cut by 14 percent ...

  Tokyo / AFP As China’s leaders consider ways to improve market oversight and avoid the kind of boom and bust in equities that shook investors around the world last year, the nation’s central bank is already extending its oversight to areas beyond its traditional focus. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) this month expanded its powers to cap cross-border capital ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG is stuck in a vicious circle as co-Chief Executive Officer John Cryan seeks to overhaul an impaired business that needs more capital, which the bank would struggle to raise if it tried to tap investors, according to Berenberg. The Frankfurt-based lender’s biggest problem is excessive leverage, Berenberg’s James Chappell wrote Monday in a note that ...

  Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. appointed Jiro Seguchi to head its brokerage and banking units in Japan from June 1, replacing Tim Latimore. Seguchi, co-head of global corporate and investment banking in the Asia-Pacific region, will move to Tokyo from Hong Kong to add the new role as country executive for Japan, according to an internal memo obtained by ...

  Bloomberg UBS Group AG hired Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP’s Arend Kapteyn as chief economist of its investment bank. Kapteyn will join the Swiss lender on August 1 in London and will report to global head of investment bank research Juan Luis Perez, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg News. A spokesman for the bank confirmed the ...

  Bloomberg Selling shares in an Italian bank today, as one fund manager put it to Gadfly, is like selling black shoes in spring time—a tough exercise. Carlo Messina, CEO of one of the banks overseeing the IPO of Veneto Banca, a troubled Italian lender struggling to meet European Central Bank requests to boost capital, has given his own grim ...

  Moscow / AFP Russia’s second largest bank VTB on Monday announced a return to profit in the first quarter, saying “stabilisation” in the Russian economy had boosted revenues, although by less than analysts had expected. Between January and March, state-controlled VTB posted a net profit of 600 million rubles ($9.24 million), after a 18.3-billion-ruble loss in the same period last ...

  Bloomberg Bank of Baroda (BoB) shares slumped the most in almost nine months after the Indian lender reported a surprise quarterly loss and its chief executive officer flagged an increase in bad loans over the coming months. Shares of the nation’s second-largest state bank sank 8.3 percent to 142.30 rupees in Mumbai. Analysts at Deutsche Bank AG, Jefferies India ...

  Tokyo / AFP The Bank of Japan’s shock negative rate policy is taking a bite out of profits at major banks, with Mitsubishi UFJ on Monday warning over its bottom line. The huge lender said its net profit fell 8.0 percent to 951.4 billion yen ($8.7 billion) in the fiscal year to March, blaming the drop on a slowdown in ...