Banking

Harare / Reuters Foreign banks operating in Zimbabwe have submitted credible plans on how they intend to transfer majority shares to locals, the country’s finance minister said on Saturday, reducing the chances the government could cancel their licences. Under an Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act all foreign companies operating in Zimbabwe were given a March 31 deadline to sell at ...

Bloomberg The Federal Reserve has given final approval to a rule that will let banks include investment-grade municipal bonds among the assets they use to meet regulatory requirements to ensure they have sufficient liquidity to weather a crisis. The Fed and other US financial regulators adopted the liquidity coverage ratio requirement in October 2014 as a response to bank deficiencies ...

Reuters Emerging Markets (EMs) are fast losing their shine for the world’s biggest investment banks. Faced with falling fees from fewer deals – and bleak prospects ahead – many have put the brakes on a decade-long expansion, with some cutting jobs and shutting offices. Subdued deal activity has meant there are fewer dollars for banks to fight over: fees in ...

Dubai / Reuters National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (Bahri) has announced on Sunday it had signed a murabaha facility with Riyad Bank valued at whopping 1.425 billion riyals ($380 million). This facility is aimed at financing the construction cost of five very large crude carriers (VLCCs). According to the concerned authorities, the facility lasts for a period of 10 ...

Shanghai / AFP China Construction Bank (CCB), the country’s second-largest lender, reported flat growth in net profit in 2015, as bad loans jumped with economic growth slowing. The bank’s net profit edged up 0.14 percent year-on-year to 228.15 billion yuan ($35 billion) in last year, slowing from a 6.1 percent annual increase in 2014, according to a statement that was ...

WARSAW / Reuters Poland’s Alior Bank has agreed to buy Bank BPH from General Electric for 1.225 billion zloty ($329 million) and said it will look to make another acquisition this year after moving into the country’s top 10. Shares in the lender, which has a market capitalisation of 4.67 billion zlotys, jumped by up to 5.7 percent, with investors ...

Bloomberg Banco Santander SA intends to close about 450 branches in Spain this year, more than one in 10, as the lender steers customers into digital banking to cut costs and bolster profitability. “Spain’s financial sector is facing a period of major change,” Country Head Rami Aboukhair told employees in an internal memo announcing the closures. “The current economic context, ...

Nicosia / AFP Bank of Cyprus, the bailed-out eurozone country’s largest lender, has announced plans to list its shares on the London Stock Exchange and to delist from the Athens market. The move reflects the bank’s ambitions of raising its “visibility and share liquidity” on a major European exchange, BoC said in a statement. The announcement came on the same ...

BLOOMBERG BNP Paribas SA and UniCredit SpA are closest to running into regulatory restraints on making payouts on securities, including their riskiest bonds, among the European banks followed by analysts at CreditSights Inc. If BNP were to run up losses that consumed capital amounting to 1.05 percent of assets weighted by risk, that would crimp the Paris-based lender’s ability to ...

Tokyo / Reuters Global banking regulators will avoid forcing banks to set aside money to cover the risk of higher interest rates, two people with direct knowledge of their deliberations said, easing concerns among some banks about the potentially high costs of holding government bonds and long-term loans. The Basel Committee, a body of banking supervisors from nearly 30 countries, ...