September, 2019

• 2 September

  Picking a bank CEO in Europe can be tough!

  

  Picking a new CEO is one of the most important decisions a board can take, yet one that Europe’s banks appear to be intent on flubbing. Lenders are struggling to find successors for the current crop of leaders. Take UBS Group AG. On August 29, the Swiss bank revamped its management board, hiring a star banker from a rival and ...

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• 2 September

  The stock market has become a very liberal place

  

  Wall Street was a very conservative place politically when I started working in the capital markets in 1999, but it seems to have lurched to the left lately. It’s not only that many of the people who work there have become more liberal, but more importantly, left-leaning behaviour by publicly traded companies is being rewarded by the stock market. The ...

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• 2 September

  Stocks mixed as China’s duties kick in; dollar rises

  

  Bloomberg European stocks climbed, US futures pared earlier declines and Asian shares were mixed after the latest China-tariff hikes kicked in. The dollar rose alongside gold. The Stoxx Europe 600 advanced for a third straight session, led by telecom and utilities shares. Equities in Japan, Hong Kong and Australia declined in thin volumes a day after President Donald Trump’s duties ...

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• 2 September

  Brexit tumult makes FTSE 100 a winner

  

  Bloomberg In a classic illustration of the seemingly perverse relationship between UK news and its stock market, several British large-caps notched record highs on Monday as the equity benchmark outshone all of Europe. The FTSE 100 jumped as much as 1.4 percent, the most since July and more than double the gain of the Stoxx Europe 600, with companies including ...

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• 2 September

  Rescued China bank suspends payments on dollar securities

  

  Bloomberg A regional Chinese lender under the spotlight for liquidity strains plans to suspend dividend payments on its offshore preference shares, sending indicated prices on those securities tumbling. Bank of Jinzhou Co, which was the subject of a government-orchestrated rescue in July, said that it’s seeking shareholder approval to halt dividends for the year through October 26. That’s after its ...

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• 2 September

  Swiss lender held off currency interventions

  

  Bloomberg Swiss National Bank sight deposits fell for the first time in seven weeks, suggesting the central bank has scaled back interventions to weaken the franc. Sight deposits, considered an early indicator of SNB market activity, declined 154 million francs ($155 billion). They had risen by 2.5 billion francs the previous week, and 3.8 billion francs the period before that. ...

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• 2 September

  Banker pay restrictions to stay: Ireland

  

  Bloomberg Ireland won’t change its restrictions on banker pay, its junior finance minister signalled, in the clearest sign yet that the rules will remain in place. “I’m of the view the decision is made,” Michael D’Arcy said in a Bloomberg TV interview in Hong Kong. “The bankers in those institutions are well paid. The threshold is 500,000 euros and that’s ...

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• 2 September

  JPMorgan: It’s time to buy stocks despite trade woes

  Bloomberg Now is finally the time to buy risk assets, with global stocks set to advance into the year-end, strategists at JPMorgan Chase & Co said. Positive technical indicators and monetary easing will likely outweigh the uncertainty of the US-China trade war and the “wild card” of developments in tariff negotiations, according to JPMorgan. After August’s sell-off, the strategists signalled ...

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• 2 September

  Danish regulator reports Danske Bank to police on overcharging investors

  

  Bloomberg Denmark’s financial watchdog has reported Danske Bank A/S to the police after it overcharged retail investors. The bank, which is already under criminal investigation in the US and across Europe for its role in an Estonian money laundering scandal, misled its customers about the returns they could expect on short-term investments, the Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) in Copenhagen said ...

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• 2 September

  German tax case puts entire finance industry on trial

  

  Bloomberg Germany’s most convoluted tax case in recent memory gets a human face when two former investment bankers make their debut in court. But more than the duo’s dealings, it’s the role of the financial services industry at large that will come under scrutiny. The two men, Martin S, 41, and Nicholas D, 38, are charged with helping orchestrate transactions ...

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