February, 2017

• 6 February

  National Bank sets 5-year goal for ‘top 3’ slot in Canadian market

  

    Bloomberg National Bank of Canada has set a goal of being a ‘Top 3’ Canadian investment bank within five years, setting up a showdown with bigger rivals as the Montreal-based lender seeks to win more business from the nation’s largest companies. “We think we can compete,” Yanick Blanchard, head of corporate and investment banking at National Bank Financial, said ...

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• 6 February

  ABN Amro to slash 60% of senior management as bank shrinks

  

    Bloomberg ABN Amro NV plans cut 60 of its 100 senior management jobs and reduce the number of top executives by more than half in a revamp that reflects the bank’s shrinking size. A new management board will include the heads of retail, commercial, corporate and institutional, and private banking, the Amsterdam-based lender said in a statement on Monday. ...

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• 6 February

  Global banks extend rally while dollar fluctuates

  

    Bloomberg Bank stocks continued a rally sparked by the Trump administration’s plan to roll back financial regulations, while the dollar fluctuated as investors weighed the prospects for a Federal Reserve rate increase in March. Equities from India to Japan climbed after the S&P 500 Index closed within a point of its all-time high. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. jumped ...

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• 6 February

  BNP Paribas outpaces its European peers

  

    Bloomberg With some of Europe’s largest banks still struggling to boost profitability and raise dividends, BNP Paribas SA is doing both. That helps explain why investors have driven the shares to the highest in almost a decade. The Paris-based lender will probably report on Tuesday that fourth-quarter net income more than doubled to 1.63 billion euros ($1.75 billion), according ...

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• 6 February

  Lloyds bonuses to beat RBS’s for first time since bailouts

  

    Bloomberg Lloyds Banking Group Plc is poised to pay more in bonuses than Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc for the first time since the financial crisis, underscoring the contrasting performances of two of Britain’s bailed out banks. Lloyds has earmarked about 390 million pounds ($486.8 million) for its employee bonus pot, overtaking RBS, which is considering a pool ...

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• 6 February

  Resurrecting ‘therapy beach’

  

    Broome / DPA The Dead Sea shimmers blue-green under a mild winter sun, waves rippling gently to the beach as a tourist couple enters the water. The high salt content – at 34 percent almost 10 times the level in the world’s seas – means that a human floats on the water like a cork with no danger of ...

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• 6 February

  For these students, free tuition doesn’t mean free college

  

    BUFFALO, NY / DPA They don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but … New York public college students who would stand to gain from the nation’s most ambitious free-tuition proposal are quick to point out a sobering reality from their own meager finances: Free tuition doesn’t mean free college. Take Brooklyn College senior Florencia Salinas, who despite having her tuition ...

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• 6 February

  Vitol sees crude rattled as Trump makes market fret

  

    Bloomberg Donald Trump and global crude producers are set to take prices on a bumpy ride this year, according to the world’s biggest independent oil trader. As investors are kept on tenterhooks over US policies and whether OPEC and other nations will curb output as pledged, global benchmark Brent crude may vacillate between $52 and $62 a barrel, according ...

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• 6 February

  Oil’s gain on Iran-US tensions tempered by shale drilling boom

  

    Bloomberg Oil’s advance to near $54 a barrel amid increased tensions between Iran and the US eased after American drillers expanded the rig count to the highest level since October 2015. Futures rose 0.4 percent in New York after last week capping a third weekly gain. Prices climbed as much as 1.3 percent on Friday after Donald Trump’s administration ...

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• 6 February

  Glencore extends major Libyan oil deal

  

    LONDON / Reuters Swiss-based commodities giant Glencore has extended a deal with Libya’s state oil firm to be the sole marketer of one third of the country’s current crude oil production, sources familiar with the matter said. It was not clear for how long Glencore would continue to have exclusivity over the output and whether some parts of the ...

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