The BBC has reported that Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, has made an emergency statement to the House of Commons regarding loans made by the Bank of England to RBS and HBOS. The announcement follows yesterday’s revelation that the Bank propped up the two banks with £61.6 billion at the height of the financial [...]
Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) has expanded its branch network with the opening of KCB Elgon-Masaba in Uganda. KCB Uganda Director Samwiri Njuki spoke at the opening of the branch, reaffirming the bank’s aim to bring financial services closer to the markets and thus help to support socio-economic integration in the East Africa region. KCB is [...]
Jefferies has announced the appointment of David Owen as MD and chief European financial economist within the Fixed Income Group. He joins the firm from Dresdner Kleinwort, where he worked as chief economist for Developed Markets at the end of a 23 stint with the bank. As part of his new role Owen will be [...]
New research from moneyexpert.com shows that credit card providers have increased rates for cash withdrawals to an average 25.37% in November 2009, up from 24.8% a year earlier. In addition, the average fee for withdrawing cash now stands at 2.73%, meaning that a £200 withdrawal from an ATM costs the average customer £5.46, even if [...]
Nomura International Plc has been fined £1.75m by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for failures in systems and controls in its International Equity Derivatives (IED) business. The standards of systems and controls Nomura operated, as a firm trading in complex and high risk financial products, fell far below the level demanded by the FSA. A [...]
Leading UAE financial institution Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) has won the Silver Class category of The Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award for the finance sector. ADCB’s Chairman H.E Eissa Al Suwaidi, Chief Executive Officer Ala’a Eraiqat and senior management staff received the award from H.H Sheikh Hazza Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, National Security Adviser. His [...]
At the height of the financial crisis the Bank of England was forced to prop up Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and HBOS with loans totalling £61.6 billion. The emergency funding was needed during October and November of 2008 to maintain the stability of the UK financial system and “prevent a loss of confidence spreading [...]
Lloyds Banking Group is offering shareholders a 59.5% discount on Monday’s closing share price in a rights issue aimed at raising £13.5 billion. The bank, which is 43% state owned, has embarked on a £22.5 billion fund raising to avoid participation in the Government’s Asset Protection Scheme (APS). The rights issue, which will create a [...]
Lloyds Banking Group is to cut another 570 posts, and has a further 340 under review. The job losses will come at the group’s life and pensions’ administration centre in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, bringing the total cull announced since the bank’s hurried merger with HBOS at the beginning of last year to around 15,000. The latest [...]
Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research has announced the appointment of Chris Flanagan as head of US Mortgage and Structured Finance Research. In his new post Flanagan will be responsible for the development of research products, analytics and modelling throughout the mortgage and structured finance disciplines. He will report directly to the head of [...]
International middle market investment bank Piper Jaffray Ltd. has announced the appointment of Torben Vest as principal of its equity sales team. Vest brings with him over two decades of experience in both the US and Europe of institutional equity sales. Before his appointment he worked for Carnegie Bank in Copenhagen in equity sales, and [...]
Lloyds Banking Group is reported to be in talks that could result in a joint venture with stockbroker, Execution. The latter was founded in 2001 and describes itself as “a full-service agency broker providing clients with execution, sales, trading, research and corporate access”. Its clients include major investing institutions, including mutual funds, pension funds, insurance [...]
The Bank of England has published a Discussion Paper on Macroprudential Policy, which it says “contributes to emerging ideas on how macroprudential instruments might be designed and deployed to help to restrain the build-up of risks within the financial system”. The document examines the virtues of using capital surcharges to “dampen cyclical over-exuberance”, suggesting that [...]
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is proposing to offload £7 billion in toxic loans into an Irish “bad bank”, The Sunday Times has reported. According to the newspaper, RBS is about to submit an application to join the Republic’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), the equivalent to the UK’s Asset Protection Scheme (APS), through its [...]
Tesco has progressed plans to compete with the UK’s High Street banks by appointing Fiserv to provide its IT systems. The supermarket giant recently renamed its financial services operations “Tesco Bank” and its partnership with the global financial technology group provides further evidence of the seriousness of its retail banking ambitions. According to Fiserv, the [...]
Islamic Bank of Britain (IBB) has joined The Mortgage Times Network, making its Home Purchase Plan available to the group’s intermediaries. The plan is a Sharia’a compliant loan that the bank claims has been generating significant interest amongst Muslims and non-Muslims. Commenting on the collaboration, IBB’s commercial director, Sultan Choudhury, says: “Working together with intermediaries [...]
The Bank of Japan’s Policy Board has chosen to retain the country’s interest rate at 0.1%. Japan has emerged from recession, although the economy remains somewhat weak. Private consumption has begun to recover, although the jobs market and income remain badly affected by the after-effects of the recession. The Bank of Japan has forecast moderate [...]
French bank Natixis has announced the appointment of Pierre-Henri Denain as global head of Capital Markets in London. Since 2008 Denain has held the post of global head of Institutional Solutions, and has been with the firm for the last three years. Prior to joining Natixis in 2006 he worked for a number of other [...]
