March, 2016

• 8 March

  HSBC going solo in China credit cards expansion plan

  

  BEIJING / Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc winning approval to start a credit-card business in China’s $1 trillion market offers Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver added flexibility in his push into the nation’s retail banking and wealth-management industries. The approval from Chinese authorities came as HSBC ended a card venture with Bank of Communications Co., the bank’s Asia-Pacific head Peter Wong ...

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• 8 March

  FirstRand profit little changed as South African growth slows

  

  CAPE TOWN / Bloomberg FirstRand Ltd., Africa’s biggest bank by value, said first-half profit was little changed after South Africa’s economy slowed and non-performing loans increased. Net income rose to 10.48 billion rand ($683 million) in the six months ended December 31 from 10.3 billion rand a year earlier, the Johannesburg-based company said in a statement on Tuesday. Earnings per share ...

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• 8 March

  Reserve Bank of Australia sees room to ease, wants lower currency

  

  Canberra / Bloomberg Australian central bank Deputy Governor Philip Lowe said that low wage growth and contained inflation provide scope to cut rates further and said, like most of his global peers, he’d prefer a weaker currency. The Reserve Bank of Australia’s official said the economy had proved pretty resilient to the winding back of a massive mining investment boom and ...

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• 8 March

  BofA Asia equity-trading head to leave amid cuts

  BLOOMBERG Arnaud Droitcourt, Bank of America Corp.’s head of Asia-Pacific equity trading, left the company as it cuts jobs to trim expenses, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Droitcourt, a Hong Kong-based managing director who oversaw both cash equity and equity derivatives trading of the bank, left Tuesday, said the person, who asked not to be identified ...

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• 8 March

  Counterfeit notes: Europe to brace up monetary system

  BLOOMBERG European Central Bank (ECB) Executive Board member Yves Mersch has said he wants evidence that high-denomination euro banknotes facilitate crime. While there’s been much coverage of the matter, Mersch would be “very happy if any substantiated evidence would be shipped to the ECB.” Step forward the Spanish police, who arrested two men at Madrid airport and seized 200,000 euros ...

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• 8 March

  At JPMorgan, coders indulge in pure banking business

  

  Bloomberg For the biggest US bank, the best way to fight Silicon Valley is to mimic it. JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s. new technology hub across the street from the Hudson Yards development on Manhattan’s West Side — a 125,000-square-foot space so vast it’s subdivided into five neighbourhoods — has all the trappings of a start-up: foosball tables, a game room, ...

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• 8 March

  FastJet to cut routes as cash shrinks, sending stock falling

  

  BLOOMBERG FastJet Plc will start closing routes after burning through cash in its efforts to become the first pan-African discount airline, predicting 2016 earnings will fall “materially” below analyst estimates. The share price almost halved in the biggest decline since the company was founded in 2012. The impact of challenging market conditions and currency fluctuations has proved “a lot more ...

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• 8 March

  ‘Chicken of the Sea’ producer looks to Europe for acquisitions

  

  Bloomberg Thai Union Group Pcl, producer of “Chicken of the Sea” canned tuna and other seafood products, is planning at least two overseas acquisitions this year to boost revenue by about $500 million, following a failed bid for the rival Bumble Bee Foods LLC last year. The Samutsakorn-based company is considering purchases of seafood producers in Europe and developing countries ...

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• 8 March

  Lindt aims to surpass Godiva’s retail network

  

  Bloomberg Lindt & Spruengli AG is challenging Godiva as the Swiss company set a goal of becoming the world’s largest premium chocolate retailer by 2020, bolstering its direct sales to consumers. Lindt plans to open 20 to 30 shops each year, the Kilchberg, Switzerland-based maker of Lindor balls said in a statement on Tuesday as it reported full-year profit growth ...

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• 8 March

  US Supreme Court rejects Apple appeal over electronic books

  

  Bloomberg The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Apple Inc. and left in place a ruling that the company conspired with publishers to raise electronic book prices when it sought to challenge Amazon.com’s dominance of the market. The justices’ order lets stand an appeals court ruling that found Cupertino, California-based Apple violated antitrust laws in 2010. Apple wanted ...

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