Tchenguiz judge says fraud agency needs more funding May 24, 2012 A SENIOR judge said yesterday the Serious Fraud Office had failed to set out a “rather simple” case clearly during an investigation into the Tchenguiz brothers and called for better funding for the agency. Judge John Thomas, who has already slated the agency for “sheer incompetence” in the case linked to the collapse of Iceland’s [...]
Germany feels the squeeze as output declines May 24, 2012 THE EUROZONE’S downturn has now hit Germany, influential survey data showed yesterday, leading economists to forecast a fall in GDP this quarter for the single currency area. Services activity in the Eurozone dropped sharply according to Markit’s purchasing managers’ index (PMI) which came in at 46.5 in May, a seven-month low and well below the [...]
BBVA signals retreat from Latin American pensions businesses May 24, 2012 ONE of Spain’s largest lenders, BBVA, has announced plans to offload its South American pensions business in the latest sign of European banks’ retreat from foreign markets. BBVA said it “has decided to initiate strategic review” of two businesses, one that operates in Chile, Peru and Colombia and another targeting just Mexico. The bank said that it [...]
Moody’s cuts its ratings on three Swedish banks May 24, 2012 CREDIT rating agency Moody’s last night downgraded the long-term debt and deposit ratings for three Swedish banks: Nordea, Svenska Handelsbanken and Landshypotek. Moody’s blamed the banks’ high reliance on wholesale funding, modest profitability and risks to asset quality due to the EU export-oriented Swedish economy for the move. However, Moody’s emphasised that the Swedish banks [...]
JP Morgan says ECB ready to act May 24, 2012 THE EUROPEAN Central Bank (ECB) may slash interest rates and pump more cheap cash into banks in response to the economic slowdown, JP Morgan forecast yesterday. As the ECB had previously hoped the economy would be recovered by now, analysts believe that it may resort to another one-year long-term refinancing operation (LTRO) in July to [...]
Debate rages over call to end free banking May 24, 2012 CONSUMER groups and politicians yesterday joined the debate on bank fees following claims by a top Bank of England official that free current accounts are a “dangerous myth”. Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s executive director and chief executive-elect of the new banking regulator the Prudential Regulatory Authority, said the lack of clarity on current account fees “may [...]
How does the British system work? May 24, 2012 Q How many personal current accounts are there in Britain? A There are over 70m personal current accounts serving around 90 per cent of the population. The majority of them are free to use. Q How unusual is it to have easy access to free current accounts? A Britain is almost unique in having free [...]
G4S banker quits Deutsche May 24, 2012 DEUTSCHE Bank has bid farewell to a second banker who led its advisory team on G4S’s ill-fated attempt to buy rival ISS. Anthony Parsons has left the bank following his move to a “vice chairman” role last summer that came shortly before he led a team advising security giant G4S in a botched takeover attempt of [...]
Dexia sells its Turkish lender to Sberbank May 24, 2012 BAILED-OUT Belgian lender Dexia is close to selling its Turkish business to Russia’s Sberbank, the bank said yesterday. It is understood that Sberbank, which is being advised by Rothschild, is likely to pay somewhere between $3bn (£1.9bn) and $4bn for Denizbank, one of Turkey’s biggest banks. Qatar National Bank had also been in the running to [...]
ANTI-AUSTERITY PARTY IS GREEK FRONT-RUNNER May 24, 2012 GREECE’S radical left party, led by Alexis Tsipras (pictured), last night emerged as the front-runner in the race to win next month’s elections. Syriza, which opposes Greece’s austerity measures, now has 30 per cent of the vote, outpacing conservative rival New Democracy by 26 per cent, according to the Public Issue polling company. Greece faces [...]
