Sudan / AFP Among the sprawling thatch huts of Darfur’s Zamzam Camp for displaced civilians, there is little feeling a referendum on administrative status might remedy years of suffering caused by the conflict. The vote on whether Sudan’s restive west should unite its five states into a single region has been touted by Khartoum as proof of stability returning to ...

  Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and three other major US banks failed to persuade regulators they could go bankrupt without disrupting the financial system and could now face a tighter leash from Washington after government agencies used one of the most significant post-crisis powers bestowed under the Dodd-Frank Act. The banks—also including Wells Fargo & ...

  Bloomberg The challenges that led to the collapse of Chase Bank Kenya Ltd. are isolated and don’t indicate an unstable lending industry or pose a systemic risk, according to the East African nation’s main banking lobby group. Chase Bank, which was placed under receivership on April 7, was the third small-sized lender in nine months to go into statutory ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, Europe’s biggest investment bank, hired James Boyle from Citigroup Inc. as global co-head of its equity-derivatives business following a slump in the unit’s sales, according to two people familiar with the decision. Boyle, who is based in Hong Kong, will also be head of equities for the Asia Pacific region, said the people, who asked ...

  Bloomberg An agreement between Italian officials and bank executives to create a multibillion-euro fund to offload bad loans is a step in the right direction, say analysts, but the pact may not be enough to reassure investors that the pain for Italy’s troubled banking sector is over. Banks, insurers and institutional investors agreed to create a vehicle named Atlante ...

  Bloomberg The Bank of England will take responsibility for a U.K. benchmark measure of overnight funding rates as officials seek to prevent a recurrence of the rigging scandals since the global financial crisis. The BOE will provide oversight and governance for the Sterling Overnight Index Average, or Sonia, from April 25, it said in a statement released Wednesday. The ...

  Bloomberg The business of trading stocks has claimed another scalp this year. Nomura is shuttering its equities division in Europe, hot on the heels of Barclays’ pullback from Asian equities. The Japanese bank hadn’t cracked the top 10 list in Europe, and Barclays had failed to do the same in Asia. They won’t be the last to scale back ...

Bloomberg Greek PM Alexis Tsipras will seek help from French President Francois Hollande after talks between his government and its creditors failed — again — to produce the approval needed to release funds from his country’s third bailout. Tsipras will meet his French counterpart in the Elysee Palace with Greek officials still struggling to convince inspectors from the European Commission, ...

  Frankfurt / AFP Volkswagen announced on Wednesday that its top executives were willing to accept “sharp reductions” in their annual bonuses as the embattled carmaker struggles to stem the fallout from its massive engine-rigging scandal. “The supervisory and executive boards are in agreement that given the current situation, a signal should be sent regarding the issue of management board pay,” ...

  Paris / AFP France said on Wednesday it was on track for modest growth this year at the same rate as earlier projections and also left its public deficit forecast untouched. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the eurozone’s second biggest economy is expected to be 1.5 percent in 2016 and the same next year, the finance ministry said. That’s ...