Banking

Bloomberg The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is seeking to force UBS Group AG to turn over records on an account in Singapore held by a US citizen, potentially opening a new front against offshore tax evasion beyond Switzerland. The IRS last month asked a federal judge in Miami to force UBS, the largest Swiss bank, to produce documents on Ching-Ye ...

BLOOMBERG Bank of America Corp. (BofA) has generated less revenue from its equity and fixed-income trading businesses so far this year than in the same period of 2015, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The second-largest US lender’s revenue from fixed-income trading, which includes credit, currencies and commodities, dropped about 10 percent from a year earlier, the people ...

Bloomberg Barclays Africa Group’s Kenyan unit reported full-year profit that was little changed as bad loans increased on rising credit costs. Net income was 8.4 billion shillings ($83 million) in the 12 months through December, compared with 8.39 billion shillings a year earlier, Barclays Bank of Kenya Ltd. Chief Financial Officer Yusuf Omari told reporters Friday in the capital, Nairobi. ...

RIGA / Bloomberg A Latvian lender linked to a string of money-laundering probes was closed by the European Central Bank (ECB). Trasta Komercbanka AS, the Baltic nation’s 13th-biggest lender by assets, had its license revoked after local regulators slapped restrictions on it in January. Latvia’s Financial and Capital Market Commission, which doesn’t deem the bank systemically important, said the move ...

Tokyo  / Bloomberg In a quest to reduce their reliance on one of the world’s least profitable banking markets, Japanese lenders are setting their sights on a much more lucrative one: Mexico. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) Inc. and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. are among so-called megabanks expanding in Mexico, riding the coattails of Japanese automakers that are building factories ...

FRANKFURT / Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG is set to lose two of its most senior investment bankers in Asia as Bill Nichol and Joaquin Rodriguez Torres plan to depart this year, people familiar with the matter said. Nichol, who runs investment banking for financial institutions in the Asia-Pacific region, plans to leave in May after more than 13 years with ...

Jakarta / BLOOMBERG Indonesia’s top banks may get a lift from new government plans to spur the economy, which are seen boosting loan growth while allowing them to protect margins that are already among the world’s widest. The Financial Services Authority, known as OJK, will lower the ceiling for deposit rates this month for major lenders, a step it intends ...

Bloomberg One week before a long-awaited stimulus decision, European Central Bank (ECB) officials are privately deliberating over how to enhance their monetary policy stance without maiming its transmission. Committees studying how to mitigate the impact on banks have prepared potential measures that range from variations on a tiered deposit rate to techniques for countering the impact of stimulus on excess ...

Tokyo / Bloomberg Bank of Japan (BOJ) Deputy Governor Hiroshi Nakaso indicated the central bank is prepared to take its benchmark rate deeper into negative territory, though not immediately. “We have designed a policy that technically allows us to cut the level further,” Nakaso told reporters in Okinawa on Thursday, referring to a minus 0.1 percent interest rate policy the ...

PARIS / Bloomberg With some of their European rivals including Deutsche Bank AG still reeling from full-year losses, French banks entered a tumultuous 2016 with the strongest earnings in almost a decade and pledged to reward shareholders with higher dividends. Their resolve is about to be put to the test. In France, a focus on consumer lending has helped shield lenders ...