Bloomberg TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. and its largest stakeholder, Toronto-Dominion Bank, agreed to buy Scottrade Financial Services Inc. for $4 billion, combining two of the largest online brokerages while expanding the U.S. operations of Canada’s second-largest lender. TD Ameritrade agreed to acquire Scottrade’s brokerage operations for about $2.7 billion. Toronto-Dominion, which owns about 42 percent of TD Ameritrade, will ...

  Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) expressed concern that some banks may take excessive risks to maintain profitability while the ability of others to lend could weaken following the introduction of its negative interest-rate policy. Banks are less able to make up for declining profitability of domestic lending because the areas that had supported earnings, such as low bad-loan ...

  Bloomberg China’s money market is showing increasing signs of a shortage of cash, with interest-rate swaps climbing to a six-month high and banks paying higher interest to obtain government funds. The cost of one-year swaps rose as much as four basis points to 2.67 percent in Shanghai, the most expensive since April 29, while the benchmark seven-day repurchase rate ...

  Bloomberg Nineteen US financial firms — including titans such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. as well as regional lenders and credit unions — have signed up for a new real-time payments network dubbed Zelle. The venture, replacing an existing system called clearXchange next year, will be accessible to more than ...

  Bloomberg The European Union is preparing a rewrite of international capital requirements as part of a growing effort to soften the blow of regulations on struggling banks. The European Commission will announce a sweeping plan as early as next month for enacting global standards including a requirement for lenders to have more stable funding to weather a future crisis. ...

  AFP Political stalemate and the conflict rocking Libya are preventing the North African country from taking advantage of its vast oil resources and pushing the economy towards collapse, experts say. When the 2011 uprising toppled the regime of dictator Moamer Kadhafi, Libyans dreamt of transforming their country into another Dubai. Today, they have somewhat lower expectations. “To live in ...

  Bloomberg Oil investors are playing it safe as OPEC hammers out the details of a deal to trim output. Money managers reduced bets on falling prices to the lowest since May as oil held above $50 a barrel, prolonging a rally that began when the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries announced a deal to cut production to between 32.5 ...

  Reuters A short-term cap in oil output would reduce market volatility, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Monday at a meeting with OPEC Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo, as both are looking at ways to stabilise prices. Russia is the world’s largest oil producer but not a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its budget has ...

  Reuters Oman’s government is covering between 60 and 70 percent of this year’s budget deficit via international borrowing such as eurobond issues, direct placements of debt and other instruments, the central bank’s executive president said. The rest of the deficit will be financed locally by drawing down financial reserves, such as money held by the State General Reserve Fund, ...

  Bloomberg Singapore, which is vying to become a regional center for the trading of liquefied natural gas in Asia, picked Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Pavilion Gas Pte Ltd. as its next suppliers of the fuel. The companies will have exclusive rights to sell 1 million metric tons of LNG annually for up to 3 years, with imports beginning ...