Banking

  Bloomberg The combined compensation for Standard Bank Group Ltd.’s joint Chief Executive Officers Sim Tshabalala and Ben Kruger rose 43 percent after full-year profit climbed by a third. Kruger’s total pay was 30.79 million rand ($2.1 million), including incentive awards amounting to 22 million rand, giving the CEO an increase of 61 percent from a year earlier, according to ...

  Bloomberg Bank of America Corp appointed Luigi Rizzo as head of investment banking in Europe, the Middle East and Africa as the bank gives some senior employees newly expanded responsibilities in that division. Rizzo will report locally in his newly created role to Bob Elfring, head of EMEA corporate and investment banking, according to the memo, which was obtained ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG co-Chief Executive Officer Juergen Fitschen and four former bank officials were acquitted of charges that they lied to judges during a more than 14-year-old dispute with a German media mogul. The men were cleared after almost one year of trial at a Munich court Monday. The charges against defendants including former CEOs Josef Ackermann and ...

  Bloomberg China’s regulators are discussing a possible reduction in the amount of provisions that the country’s banks must set aside for their bad loans, the chairman of China Construction Bank Corp. said on Monday. A reduction in the bad loan coverage ratio to about 120 percent to 130 percent would be “reasonable” and “possible,” Wang Hongzhang told Bloomberg News ...

  BLOOMBERG Pity the poor investor trying to stack up one set of investment bank results against another. The big European banks begin reporting first quarter earnings this week. Trading will be weak. Transaction volumes are down. It ain’t going to be pretty. But trying to discern whose investment banking business is best—or worst—is an ugly task. First, whereas investment ...

  Reuters The five US regional banks most exposed to the energy sector set aside millions of dollars more in the first quarter to cover potential losses from bad loans to the struggling oil industry. Overall, provisions for bad loans at Comerica Inc, Regions Financial Corp, KeyCorp, SunTrust Banks Inc and Fifth Third Bancorp more than doubled to $570 million ...

  Dubai / Reuters Oman’s Bank Dhofar, in talks with Bank Sohar on a possible merger, said on Sunday that it communicated the terms for a deal to its smaller rival after completing due diligence. Bank Dhofar, the sultanate’s second-largest lender by assets, said the financial and legal due diligence concluded on April 23, it said in a bourse statement. ...

  Bloomberg Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Comerica Inc. should move faster to restructure, including selling more assets, to catch up with competitors that are generating better returns, CLSA Ltd.’s Mike Mayo said. “All three of those banks have failed to create value for every year for the last eight years,” the analyst said. “So our question for ...

  Vienna / Reuters The euro zone needs negative interest rates to avoid sliding into deflation, European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said in an Austrian newspaper interview, defending the policy against widespread criticism in Germany. The ECB kept the cost of borrowing for banks at zero on Thursday and will continue to charge them 0.4 percent ...

  Bloomberg Family Bank Ltd., a closely-held Kenyan lender, plans to raise 4 billion shillings ($40 million) in a share sale to existing investors by June that will be used to fund an East African expansion. The company wants to make a “cautious entry” into markets in the region over the next year, outgoing Managing Director Peter Munyiri told reporters ...