Every deal in the payments business looks expensive – until the next one comes along. Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) is paying a heady $34 billion plus for Worldpay Inc. not much more than a year after the rival payments processing company bulked up with an expensive takeover of its own. The logic of the combination is simply greater scale ...

Germany has come up with a solution to the deep troubles at one of the world’s largest banks: make it part of an even bigger one. The people who oversee Europe’s financial system had better be ready for the consequences if this doesn’t end well. The Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank is in talks to merge with crosstown rival Commerzbank — a ...

Several theories explain why India’s new central bank governor took his boldest step yet. Little attention has been paid to the consequences. Last week, Governor Shaktikanta Das made an unexpected tweak to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) traditional management of longer-term liquidity in the banking system: by buying and selling government bonds. India’s currency, sovereign-debt and credit markets were ...

China’s banks may have a flood of bad loans waiting in the wings. Not that you’d know it from looking at official levels for 2018, which suggest the problem was broadly contained. The reality is that newly soured debt was coming through the front door as fast as banks could shovel it out the back. Authorities worked hard to restrain ...

When Facebook went down for hours this week, the internet was all atwitter (sorry). Most of what I came across was fairly snarky, but a lot of the posts were pretty clever. I saw a variation of this retweeted many times: “News flash! Facebook down! People talk to each other, kids play with toys!” (Actually, they were probably playing Fortnite ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it’s up to Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG executives to decide if their historic merger plans make sense, exposing divisions in the coalition. The plan to combine Germany’s two biggest lenders is a private business matter, Merkel said at the Global Solutions summit in Berlin, after the lenders announced talks on a deal ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s central bank sees inflation behaving well in the next financial year beginning July, but will stand ready to use monetary policy tools after the most aggressive interest rate tightening in Asia last year, its governor said. Consumer price growth will be anchored by low food inflation, State Bank of Pakistan Governor Tariq Bajwa said in an interview. While ...

Bloomberg Norway’s central bank is leaving its closest peers behind. Policy makers in Scandinavia’s richest economy are this week expected to raise interest rates to their highest level in almost four years. The step will mark a second hike since September, helping to cap inflation in western Europe’s biggest oil exporter. Backed by oil income that pumps massive amounts of ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Thailand left its benchmark interest rate unchanged on Wednesday, as expected, providing policy stability to investors days before the nation’s first election since a military coup five years ago. The Monetary Policy Committee voted unanimously to hold its policy rate at 1.75 percent, the Bank of Thailand said in a statement on Wednesday, in line with ...

Bloomberg UBS Group AG was fined a record 28 million pounds ($37 million) by a UK regulator for failings related to 136 million transaction reports between 2007 and 2017. UBS didn’t provide complete and accurate information in connection with about 87 million reportable transactions, and filed reports on another 49 million that weren’t required, the Financial Conduct Authority said in ...