Banking

Bloomberg Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. said bad debt charges will be higher than analysts expect in the first half amid a slowdown in Asia and increased market volatility, even after profit rose in the first quarter. The lender expects a first-half group credit charge a little above A$800 million ($568 million), compared to the current market consensus ...

BLOOMBERG Bankia SA is starting a process to reimburse retail investors for losses they suffered in a public offering of shares in Spain’s fourth-biggest bank in 2011, a year before it need a European bailout. Retail investors will recover 100 percent of their investment plus 1 percent annual interest, the Valencia, Spain- based bank said in a filing to regulators ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Korea (BoK) kept its key rate unchanged Tuesday for an eighth consecutive month as it waits for a clearer picture of first-quarter data and assesses the impact of unstable markets. The decision to keep the seven-day repurchase rate at a record low 1.5 percent was forecast by all 15 economists in a Bloomberg survey. South Korea’s ...

Bloomberg For years, the country’s central bank and financial supervisor have railed against lenders’ dependence on markets — rather than deposits — because of the risk that investors might flee, leaving banks in a lurch. Now, Sweden is finding the markets may be a better funding source than savers as central bank rates go deeper into negative territory. Market funding ...

Bloomberg China’s cabinet has discussed lowering the ratio of provisions banks must set aside for bad loans, potentially easing a drag on earnings after soured debts at lenders climbed to the highest in a decade. The China Banking Regulatory Commission would be responsible for deciding the timing and magnitude of any reduction, said people with knowledge of the matter, who ...

Bloomberg Rainer Neske, the former head of consumer banking at Deutsche Bank AG, is poised to become the next chief executive officer of state-owned regional lender Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, according to people with knowledge of the matter. LBBW’s supervisory board will meet on Tuesday to decide whether to approve the 51-year-old as successor to Hans-Joerg Vetter, 63, according to the people, ...

Bloomberg United Overseas Bank (UOB) Ltd.’s fourth-quarter profit barely rose as swelling expenses and provisions for bad loans capped gains in income. Net income gained 0.3 percent to S$788 million ($564 million) for the three months ended Dec. 31 from a year earlier, Singapore’s third-biggest bank said Tuesday in an exchange statement. That matched the average estimate of seven analysts ...

Bloomberg China’s bank lending surged to a record 2.51 trillion yuan ($385 billion) in January, official figures showed Tuesday, as credit gushed to help boost the flagging economy. New loans extended by banks beat market expectations of 1.9 trillion yuan, according to a median forecast compiled by Bloomberg News, and far exceeded the 597.8 billion yuan in December. But analysts ...

Bloomberg Steven Hellman has stepped down as chief executive officer of Credit Suisse Group AG’s Russian business after heading the Swiss bank’s business in the country since 2010. “We’re going through a very difficult transitional period for the industry and that’s exacerbated in Russia by the particular political and other issues the country is facing,” Hellman said in an interview ...

Bloomberg It’s not clear how much of Singapore’s bad loans for 2015, the highest since 2009, are due to low commodity prices, because banks don’t give a detailed industry breakdown of their assets. Given the city’s focus on becoming a global rig-building hub, chances are there’s a link. Another report Monday from Sembcorp Marine, the world’s second-largest maker of offshore ...