Ask for a concrete example of the euro zone’s march towards further integration, and you will soon hear the words banking union. At the height of the sovereign debt crisis, European leaders agreed to move supervision of the region’s most important lenders to the European Central Bank (ECB), create a single rulebook, and start centralised funds to deal with future ...

Sometimes being good enough just isn’t enough. That’s the situation Deutsche Bank AG’s Asian employees may find themselves in if a merger with Commerzbank AG goes ahead. Deutsche Bank has relatively resilient investment- and corporate-banking franchises in the region, where Commerzbank has only a tiny presence. But the optics are awkward: It’s a unit stuffed with highly paid bankers at ...

China has become the fail-safe excuse for every bad economic indicator in the world. Among industries, autos are playing a similar role. So it should be little surprise that both have been fingered as fall guys for a slump in Germany manufacturing activity that spurred gloom over global growth and doom in financial markets. The purchasing managers’ index fell to ...

On a number of fronts in online shopping, Amazon.com Inc.’s strategy is clear and brutally effective. It is gunning for more dollars in high-margin categories such as home goods with a growing catalog of private-label items. It’s offering two-hour delivery in some markets, a speedy service few retailers are in position to match. And its popular, voice-activated Alexa devices and ...

Bloomberg US stocks advanced and bonds retreated globally as upbeat economic reports from China to Europe and renewed hopes for a Sino-US trade deal attracted investors to riskier assets. The euro and pound strengthened. The S&P 500 climbed for a fifth day, equaling the longest winning streak in two months. The Dow briefly erased gains after a gauge of US ...

Bloomberg Italian stocks extended their 2019 rally on Wednesday, with the FTSE MIB benchmark set to enter a bull market, boosted by positive economic data. The benchmark gauge rose 1 percent and has gained 20 percent since reaching a two-year low on December 27 in a broad-based advance led by stocks including Ferrari NV and UniCredit SpA. March’s composite PMI ...

Bloomberg Banco Santander SA pledged to cut 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) of annual costs and ramp up investment in digital and its prized Brazilian business as the Spanish lender seeks to revive its moribund share price. The Spanish banking group plans to achieve the incremental cost cuts over three to four years while investing 20 billion euros in digitalisation, ...

Bloomberg UniCredit SpA is nearing an agreement with US authorities over allegations that the bank provided dollar-clearing services to Iranian clients in violation of US sanctions, people with the knowledge of the matter said. The deal would cost the Italian lender about $900 million but spare it from criminal prosecution, the people said. A settlement of that size would be ...

Bloomberg Zimbabwe’s lenders, which include units of Standard Bank Group Ltd and Ecobank Ltd, appealed to the central bank to raise interest rates that have been capped at 12 percent for the past two years, saying this would increase lending in the collapsing economy. They also proposed that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe introduce an overnight rate to facilitate lending ...

Bloomberg SoftBank Group Corp plans to hire about 10 people to boost its in-house investment capabilities, primarily from Goldman Sachs Group Inc, according to people familiar with the situation. The additions will come from banking, private equity, consulting and, in at least one case, the medical profession, said the people, asking not to be named because the matter is private. ...