January, 2021

• 26 January

  Russia to stamp out Navalny protests as new unrest looms

  

  Bloomberg Russian authorities ratcheted up the threat of prosecution after tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the world’s largest country in support of jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Police detained more than 3,500 people in 125 cities, including almost 1,500 in the capital Moscow, according to monitoring group OVD-Info, though most were released within hours. The ...

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• 26 January

  Italy PM weighs tactical retreat ahead of vote

  

  Bloomberg Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is sizing up his options ahead of a crucial Senate vote this week, including a resignation offer that would position him as the top candidate to lead a new government. The 56-year-old Conte is considering offering his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella, who oversees forming new governments, according to officials who asked not to ...

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• 26 January

  Portugal president De Sousa wins new 5-year term

  Bloomberg Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa won re-election to a second five-year term, a sign of political stability as the country tries to contain the pandemic. Rebelo de Sousa, 72, took 61% of vote with 99.9% of the country’s voting districts reporting, according to the government’s election website. Portuguese presidents have usually served two terms. In Portugal, the prime ...

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• 26 January

  European banks set to trail Wall Street as provisions swell

  

  Bloomberg European banks probably failed to live up to US peers’ record fourth-quarter profits as they set aside more money for troubled loans and missed out on the rally in equities trading. Ten of Europe’s biggest lenders probably set aside $15 billion for doubtful credit in the fourth quarter, taking the year’s total to $61.5 billion, the highest since 2012, ...

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• 26 January

  HSBC’s CEO faces UK questions over HK account freezes

  

  Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Noel Quinn is set to appear before the UK Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee to answer questions over the lender’s moves to freeze accounts of activists in Hong Kong, according to an exiled lawmaker. Quinn is listed as a participant, along with Colin Bell, the bank’s chief compliance officer, at private and public ...

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• 26 January

  Morgan Stanley’s Gorman top-paid big bank CEO

  

  Bloomberg Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer (CEO) James Gorman leaped past JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon as the best-paid CEO of a major US bank. Morgan Stanley boosted Gorman’s pay 22% to $33 million for 2020, when the Wall Street bank posted its third consecutive year of record earnings. His pay includes $1.5 million in salary and a $7.88 ...

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• 26 January

  Deutsche Bank probes sales of investment banking products

  

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG is conducting an internal probe after receiving complaints that some bank employees sold risky investments to clients who didn’t properly understand them, and then shared the profits. “We initiated an investigation in relation to our engagement with a limited number of clients,” a bank spokesman said in a statement following a Financial Times report, adding that ...

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• 26 January

  Kotak Mahindra Bank reports $254m profit as bad loans fall

  

  Bloomberg Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd., India’s third-largest lender by market value, posted December-quarter profit that topped analyst expectations as bad debt fall. Net income totaled 18.5 billion rupees ($254 million) for the three months ended December 31, compared with 16 billion rupees a year earlier, the Mumbai-based bank said in a filing on Monday. Analysts had expected a profit of ...

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• 26 January

  RBI proposes regulating big NBFCs more like banks

  

  Bloomberg India’s central bank proposes tighter regulations for large shadow lenders to prevent events such as the collapse of a major financier in 2018, the effects of which still linger in the nation’s financial system. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) suggests classifying so-called non-bank financial companies (NBFCs) into four categories based on parameters including the size of assets, according ...

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• 26 January

  Tencent’s $251 billion rally triggers frenzy in shares

  

  Bloomberg Hong Kong’s equity traders can’t get enough of Tencent Holdings Ltd., the $950 billion giant that’s on pace for its biggest ever monthly gain. They’re paying up for bullish derivatives tracking the Chinese internet firm, buying thousands of January call options that expire on Thursday. The price of one Tencent contract — which bets the stock will rise past ...

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