Banking

  WASHINGTON / AP When the Federal Reserve chose not to raise its key interest rate, it nevertheless made clear that its next move will be another increase. That stance puts it at odds with other major central banks, which are doing the reverse — seeking to ease credit to spur lending. That policy divergence could pose risks for the ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG was the best performer among European lenders after reporting a surprise profit in the first quarter as legal expenses dropped and trading businesses performed better than analysts forecast. Net income declined to 214 million euros from 544 million euros in the year-earlier period, the company said in a statement on Thursday. Analysts had forecast a ...

  Tokyo / AFP Bank of Japan (BOJ) shocked markets on Thursday as it held fire on fresh stimulus measures, sparking questions about whether there is anything left in its policy arsenal to kickstart a sliding economy. Dealers were caught off guard by the decision, which sent the yen skyrocketing, especially after another set of weak economic data in the ...

  Bloomberg EFG International AG, in its second deal this year, has agreed to buy the Luxembourg-based private banking activities of UBI Banca International SA with 3.6 billion euros ($4.1 billion) of client assets. EFG earlier agreed to buy BSI from Brazil’s Grupo BTG Pactual SA in a bid to become Switzerland’s fifth-largest private bank. EFG didn’t disclose the price ...

  Reuters Citigroup has dropped out of the group of banks providing a $1.5 billion bridge loan to Gulf-based Adeptio for its planned purchase of a majority stake in Kuwait Food Co (Americana), three sources aware of the matter said on Thursday. The US bank failed to secure internal approval to participate in the deal, with two of the sources ...

  London / Reuters Barclays reported a worse than expected 33 percent slump in pretax profits for the first three months of the year, as the lender followed its US peers in reporting falling investment banking revenues in a weak global market environment. Barclays said first quarter pretax profits fell to £793 million ($1.15 billion), just below the average forecast ...

  Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc Chief Executive Officer Bill Winters expects erratic swings in global markets to continue for at least the rest of this year, complicating his efforts to reinvigorate earnings and restore the Asia-focused lender’s dividend. Reviving “depressed” revenue in the face of a sluggish economy and a slump in commodities prices is “the big challenge,” Winters said. ...

  Doha / AFP Qatar National Bank (QNB) said it is investigating an alleged hack which potentially exposes the names and passwords of a large number of customers. Media reports claimed that a 1.4GB trove of documents has been leaked online anonymously. Among the information reportedly leaked are the bank details of several journalists working for satellite broadcaster Al-Jazeera. Another folder ...

Bloomberg Banco Santander SA, Spain’s biggest bank, reported lower first-quarter profit as revenue slumped in its home market and operations aboard were hit by currency effects. Net income fell 5 percent to 1.63 billion euros ($1.84 billion) from 1.72 billion euros a year earlier, the bank said on Wednesday. That beat the 1.5 billion-euro average estimate in a Bloomberg survey ...

Beijing / Bloomberg A Chinese bank head signalled confidence that the government will loosen requirements for lenders’ bad-debt provisions, a move that could help them to report larger profits. A reduction in the coverage ratio to about 120 percent to 130 percent of existing non-performing debt would be “reasonable” and “possible,” Wang Hongzhang, the chairman of China Construction Bank Corp., ...