Banking

  Washington / AFP Seven big banks, including Bank of America, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, have agreed to pay a total of $324 million to settle a lawsuit accusing them of market manipulation of interest rates. The settlement last week followed a federal judge’s ruling in March admitting the class action lawsuit brought by investors and pension ...

  Bloomberg Commonwealth Bank of Australia posted a 4.5 percent increase in quarterly profit and joined its main competitors in reporting higher charges for bad and doubtful debts. Unaudited cash profit, which excludes one-time items, for the three months ended on March 31 was A$2.3 billion ($1.7 billion) from A$2.2 billion reported a year earlier, the Sydney-based lender said in ...

  Bloomberg Singapore’s biggest banks are in talks about setting up a system for sharing information on prospective clients, in an effort to combat money laundering in the city-state. DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Oversea-Chinese Bank Corp. and United Overseas Bank Ltd. are exploring the possibility of a countrywide model for anti-money laundering and enhanced client knowledge, according to Loretta Yuen, ...

  Reuters New Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) Governor Ahmed al-Kholifey said his main priority is to maintain monetary stability and support the government’s Vision 2030 economic reforms, Al Sharq Al Awsat newspaper reported on Sunday. Kholifey was appointed on Saturday in succession to Fahd al-Mubarak. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Saturday appointed Ahmed al-Kholifey Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority Governor, ...

  Bloomberg Commerzbank AG said it’s handed German tax authorities an interim report on possible tax-minimising trades and is preparing a final assessment. The bank is in “close communication” with officials, spokeswoman Margarita Thiel said an in e-mailed statement. The report concerns so-called cum-ex stock trades made since 2003. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Commerzbank had received information about illegitimate ...

  BLOOMBERG National Bank of Canada fell in Toronto trading after saying it will set aside C$195 million ($152 million) to cover soured oil-and-gas loans in the second quarter, joining Canadian Western Bank in providing an early warning of rising credit losses tied to energy. Shares of the country’s sixth-largest lender slid 1.8 percent to C$41.75, the worst performance in ...

  BLOOMBERG Bank of America Corp.’s Will Abbott, head of equities for Russia, stepped down after three years at the lender, according to two people familiar with his departure. Abbott, who joined the bank in 2013 from Renaissance Capital, is moving to a role outside investment banking, according to one person, who asked not to identified because the information is ...

  Bloomberg Nicholas Sossidis and Stephen Partridge-Hicks, the bankers who created the model for Structured Investment Vehicles (SIV) that later collapsed during the global financial crisis, are back. Sossidis and Partridge-Hicks own First Global Trust Bank (FGTB) Plc, a London-based firm that was authorised to provide banking services a month ago after a three-year approval process, UK Companies House and ...

  Sydney / BLOOMBERG Australia’s central bank forecast core inflation is unlikely to reach the bottom of its target this year and will probably only do so in the ensuing two years as the developed-world disinflation quandary emerges Down Under. The central bank, in its quarterly statement, left estimated economic growth at 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent this year and ...

  Milan / AFP Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo reported earnings ahead of market expectations as bad loan risks on its books diminished. Net profit fell 24.2 percent in the first quarter to 806 million euros ($920.4 million), which compares with forecasts by analysts of around 708 million. Operating profit dropped on the back of falling interest income and earnings from ...