March, 2016

• 24 March

  ANZ bad debt warning sparks resources lending fears

  

  Sydney / AFP ANZ Bank on Thursday warned sour loans will cost it at least A$900 million in the first-half, and analysts warned of more trouble ahead as slumping commodity prices squeeze Australia’s resources companies. The bank said weakness in the mining and energy sectors means it now expects bad debts to cost A$100 million ($75 million) more in the ...

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• 24 March

  Swiss National Bank spent $88 billion on interventions

  

  Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank (SNB) spent 86.1 billion francs ($88 billion) on interventions last year, a measure of its efforts to shield the economy from deflation. SNB President Thomas Jordan and his colleagues have repeatedly pledged to step in to prevent the franc from strengthening. They’ve done so even since they gave up a minimum exchange rate of 1.20 ...

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• 24 March

  Popolare, BPM to become Italy’s top bank

  

  Milan / AFP Italian banks Banco Popolare and Banca Popolare di Milano (BPM) have announced that they would merge, in a long-awaited deal that will create the country’s third-largest bank by assets. The deal will create a lender with more than 25,000 staff and four million customers, and could help drive consolidation among Italy’s fragmented bankingsector. The deal has been ...

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• 24 March

  BMO, Mastercard launch biometric corporate cards

  

  TORONTO / Reuters Bank of Montreal (BMO), Canada’s fourth largest lender, has announced that it had launched the first biometric corporate card programme in Canada and US in partnership with Mastercard. BMO and Mastercard said the technology will enable cardholders to verify transactions using facial recognition and fingerprint biometrics when making online purchases. In a statement, they said the introduction ...

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• 24 March

  Tahya Masr housing project underway for 60K slum residents

  

  Bloomberg Tahya Masr (Long Live Egypt) Fund, initiated by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is set to deliver the first and second phases of a social housing project tailored for slum residents in April. The Tahya Masr social housing project is to include 15,000 housing units to place 60,000 slum residents, said Manal Shaheen, the fund’s General Director of Development Projects. ...

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• 24 March

  Shenzhen’s banks asked to tighten household mortgage loan standards

  Bloomberg A research unit of China’s central bank branch in Shenzhen asked commercial banks in the city to strengthen risk-control practices on household mortgage loans as property prices have soared. Mortgage leverage in Shenzhen has been far higher than in other first-tier cities since 2015, and has accumulated risks, according to the statement from the Financial Society of Shenzhen Special ...

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• 24 March

  Chinese buy one-third of Vancouver homes: Toronto also records purchases

  

  Bloomberg Buyers from China comprised about one-third of purchases of Vancouver’s hot housing market in 2015, according to “back of the envelope calculations” by National Bank of Canada. Chinese investors spent about C$12.7 billion ($9.6 billion) on real estate in the western Canadian city in 2015, or 33 percent of its C$38.5 billion in total sales, according to a note ...

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• 24 March

  Buoyed by oil dip, Hainan Air profit jumps 16pc

  

  Bloomberg Hainan Airlines Co., the biggest private airline in China, reported a 15.9 percent jump in full-year profit as cheaper oil prices drove down costs and passenger numbers increased. Billionaire Chen Feng’s airline reported net income of 3 billion yuan ($460.6 million) last year compared with 2.6 billion yuan in 2014, the Haikou, Hainan-based company said in a Shanghai stock ...

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• 24 March

  Delta alliance helps Virgin Atlantic double its profit

  

  Bloomberg Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. almost doubled earnings last year after expanding its pact with 49 percent shareholder Delta Air Lines Inc., hosting more people on holiday packages and benefiting from the drop in oil prices. Pretax profit excluding exceptional items surged to 22.5 million pounds ($32 million) from a restated 12.4 million pounds in 2014, helped by ...

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• 24 March

  TreeHouse aims to refurbish pvt brands with premium products

  

  Reuters TreeHouse Foods Inc has announced it would introduce more premium, healthy snacks and popular drinks to revitalise the struggling private-label business it bought from ConAgra Foods Inc last month. TreeHouse’s $2.7 billion acquisition of ConAgra’s business — its biggest ever — makes it the largest private-label food company in the US, with 2015 pro-forma sales of about $7 billion. ...

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