Metro Bank shares tumble as crisis pushes challenger to £240m loss August 5, 2020 Metro Bank shares plunged more than 13.5 per cent this morning, after the challenger bank declared a £240.6m loss for the first six months of 2020. Its profit for the same period last year was £3.4m, representing a crash of more than 7,000 per cent. Today’s share price fall worsens an existing collapse of more [...]
Commerzbank warns of a loss in 2020 as Wirecard hits loan book August 5, 2020 German lender Commerzbank posted a 21 per cent drop in profit in the second quarter as loan loss provisions increased and warned it is set to fall to a loss in 2020. Provisions for credit losses rose to €469m as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Around €175m of the provision was related to scandal-hit [...]
Non-Standard Finance shares plunge 26 per cent as FCA raises concerns August 3, 2020 Shares in sub-prime lender Non-Standard Finance (NSF) have plunged 26 per cent after the UK’s financial watchdog raised concerns about its guarantor loans division, causing the firm to put a share issue on hold. Non-Standard Finance said in a statement today that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) had “raised a number of concerns regarding certain [...]
Metro Bank agrees £12m deal for Ratesetter in lending push August 3, 2020 Metro Bank will snap up peer-to-peer lender Ratesetter after agreeing a £12m sale it hopes will push it into more profitable banking avenues. The challenger bank will pay an initial £2.5m, it said today, and another £9.5m over the three years following the completion of the deal, based on performance criteria. Daniel Frumkin, Metro Bank’s [...]
HSBC profit plummets due to coronavirus pandemic August 3, 2020 HSBC warned warned its bad debt charges could soar to $13bn this year as the bank reported a sharp drop in profit in the first half of 2020 due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The figures The lender’s share price fell 4.63 per cent to 326.25p this morning as it announced that profit [...]
Former BoE governor Sir Mervyn King warns that increasing QE would be ‘premature’ August 3, 2020 The former Governor of the Bank of England has warned that it would be premature for the UK’s central bank to expand the quantitative easing scheme too early, saying such a step would be premature. Speaking to the Coronanomics podcast, King, who held the top job at the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street during the [...]
Natwest sinks to a loss as it sets aside £2.9bn for bad loans July 31, 2020 Natwest sunk to a pre-tax loss of £770m in the first half of the year as it set aside billions of pounds in anticipation of loans turning sour due to the coronavirus pandemic. The banking group – known as RBS until earlier this month – took a hit of £2.86bn in the first half to [...]
TSB swings to a loss due to rise in impairment charges July 31, 2020 TSB has reported a £66m pre-tax loss as credit impairment charges increased by £87.5m in the first half of the year. The figures TSB reported a statutory loss before tax of £65.5m, compared to a pre-tax profit of £21.1m in the first half of 2019. The bank said credit impairment charges increased by £87.5m, which [...]
Lloyds swings to loss as it sets aside extra £2.4bn for bad loans July 30, 2020 UK banking giant Lloyds swung to a £600m pre-tax loss for the first half of the year today as coronavirus cost it an extra £2.4bn. The provision for loan losses was bigger than the £1.5bn analysts had anticipated. It took total provisions for the first half of the year to £3.8bn. Read more: Barclays braces [...]
BoE hires Accenture in £150m deal to overhaul payments system July 30, 2020 The Bank of England has hired IT consulting firm Accenture to refresh a key part of the UK’s crucial payments system in a deal worth up to £150m. The firm will overhaul the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) service, the backbone of the country’s huge payments system. RTGS settles an average £685bn of payments each working [...]