January, 2017

• 25 January

  Thai banks could save US$2bn from e-payment roll out

  

    Bloomberg Thailand is due to roll out a national digital-payment system that levies much smaller transaction fees than the nation’s banks. Yet lenders expect the network to help rather than hinder them financially. Commercial banks could save some 77 billion baht ($2.18 billion) in the next 10 years as the so-called PromptPay service curbs the use of cash, according ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Wells Fargo ends practice of alerting managers to branch visits

  

    Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co., the lender struggling to recover from a scandal involving bogus customer accounts, is eliminating its practice of giving retail bankers a day’s notice before internal inspectors visit a branch. The bank’s “branch control review process has evolved over the years to consist of electronic, centralized documents that are reviewed outside and in advance of ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  BMO share gains in US deal-making

  

    Bloomberg Bank of Montreal (BMO) expects to capture a bigger share of US dealmaking in 2017 by winning more mandates for advising on takeovers and managing stock sales, building off its most successful year in US capital markets. “In a challenging year in ’16 we managed to take market share,” Peter Myers, 57, head of US investment and corporate ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Santander chairman sees growth in all of bank’s markets

  

    Bloomberg Banco Santander SA Chairman Ana Botin said she expects growth in all of the lenders’ markets in 2017 after Spain’s largest bank reported fourth-quarter profit that beat estimates. The shares jumped. Net income rose to 1.6 billion euros ($1.72 billion) compared with 25 million euros a year earlier when profit was hit by charges, including provisions for the ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Intesa’s Generali deal to reshape Italy finance

  

    Bloomberg Intesa Sanpaolo SpA said it’s considering a merger with Assicurazioni Generali SpA, a deal that would reshape Italy’s financial industry by combining its second-biggest bank with the largest insurer. “Possible industrial combinations with Assicurazioni Generali are currently being examined by the bank’s management,” Intesa said in a statement. “The bank is interested in industrial growth in the areas ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Artistic obsession!

  

    Duisburg / DPA Outside it may be grey and dusty, but in Wolfgang Mueller’s studio, the paintings of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) glow bright. That’s because they are all fresh. In the former upholsterer’s workshop in the German city of Duisburg, Mueller sits at a white grand piano and plays his own romantic compositions in an ode to his ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  ‘Monorail with wheel on roof’ gets facelift

  

    Wuppertal /DPA If you love riding trains, you’ve got to ride this one before you die: It’s the world’s only mass-transit rail system which has its wheels on the roof and a yawning gulf under the floor. Is it an aerial cableway or a rollercoaster? Neither. It’s a stately suspended monorail that carries 24 million passengers a year through ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Oil sector hopes for more as Trump reverses US policies

  

    Bloomberg “My God, this is going to be refreshing,” Kelcy Warren, the Texas billionaire behind the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, said days after Donald Trump swept to victory. As the industry digests the newly elected president’s push to get two stalled pipeline projects moving again — with some caveats — oil and natural gas producers are preparing for even ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Unsold US gas worries Toshiba as nuclear loss looms

  

    Bloomberg Toshiba Corp., already reeling from a crisis at its nuclear business that sent its market value down by almost half, is seeking help from one of the world’s biggest buyers of LNG to avoid billions of dollars in potential losses if it can’t sell American gas. Toshiba is working with Japan’s Jera Co. to help it find buyers ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Saudi Aramco shelves plans for Malaysia venture

    Reuters Saudi Aramco has shelved plans for a multi-billion-dollar refining and petrochemical joint venture with Petronas in Malaysia, industry sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. The Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (RAPID) at Pengerang in the state of Johor in southern Malaysia was to have had a 300,000-barrel-per-day refinery and petrochemical complex with a chemical output ...

  Read More »