Bloomberg Sam Woods, head of the Bank of England’s (BOE) Prudential Regulation Authority, said UK supervisors plan to ease capital demands on smaller banks to make it easier for them to compete against larger lenders. Writing in the comment pages of the Financial Times, Woods said the authority is adopting a new approach that will help even out disparities …

  Bloomberg Intesa Sanpaolo SpA climbed in Milan trading after abandoning the idea of a joint business model with an insurance company as Chief Executive Officer Carlo Messina doesn’t see sufficient value in merging with Assicurazioni Generali SpA, Italy’s biggest insurer. The country’s second-largest bank said that after studying a possible combination under the bancassurance model, it now plans to …

  Bloomberg One of the smallest parts of Standard Chartered Plc, the UK bank with operations sprawling across Asia and Africa, has become one of its biggest losers. Losses at the unit that houses the Standard Chartered Private Equity business, or SCPE, more than doubled to $650 million in 2016 as its investments lost value, the London-based bank said. The …