Category: banks

HONG KONG – Fierce competition for new mortgage customers is driving banks in Hong Kong to offer the highest cash rebates in nearly two decades.

The deals – offered as a percentage of the principal loan amount – ramped up from about 1.3 per cent last year to as much as 2.6 per cent currently, the highest in over 17 years, according to Centaline Mortgage Broker data.

Banks such as HSBC Holdings and Bank of China (Hong Kong) are using the incentive as a way to draw in clients, while property transactions remain subdued in the city’s real estate market that’s still reeling from an exodus of residents last year amid its zero Covid policy. Lenders are also getting squeezed as a cap on lending rates in the city crimps margins.

TOKYO – Japan’s SoftBank Group reported an annual net loss of 970 billion yen (S$9.6 billion) for the year ended March 31, with the Vision Fund unit posting a quarterly investment loss due to weakness in tech valuations.

Chief executive Masayoshi Son’s attempt to bestride the tech investing industry has suffered a series of high-profile reversals after outsized bets through SoftBank’s first Vision Fund turned sour and investments made at bubbly valuations via a smaller second fund slumped.

With key architects of that strategy having left, Mr Son has focused on shoring up the balance sheet, cutting his stake in e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding and stepping back from trademark presentations to focus on the listing of chip designer Arm.

LONDON – Britain is set to formally blacklist Russia’s mercenary force Wagner group as a terrorist organisation to increase pressure on Russia, The Times newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Wagner mercenaries have spearheaded Russia’s months-long assault on Bakhmut in the industrial Donbas region.

After two months of building a legal case, proscription or a formal blacklisting of the group was “imminent” and likely to be enacted within weeks, the newspaper reported citing a government source.

WASHINGTON – A Federal Reserve report warned that banks’ concerns about slower growth could lead them to make fewer loans, accelerating an economic downturn, and highlighted commercial real estate as an area of heightened risk that will draw more scrutiny from bank examiners.

The US central bank’s financial stability report released on Monday is the first since four regional lenders collapsed. The episodes prompted weeks of wild trading in bank stocks and forced regulators to take a series of extraordinary steps that included backstopping all depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

BEIRUT (AP) — A European judicial team questioned Lebanon’s caretaker finance minister on Friday in an investigation related to corruption probes of the country’s Central Bank governor, officials said. The questioning is part of a probe by a delegation from France, Germany, and Luxembourg, now on its third visit to Lebanon to interrogate suspects and witnesses in the case. Central…

NEW YORK – US authorities are investigating the work Goldman Sachs did for Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in the weeks before it failed, including its advice that the smaller lender sell a large portfolio of securities at a loss, according to a regulatory filing by Goldman on Thursday.

Goldman said it was “cooperating with and providing information to various governmental bodies in connection with their investigations and inquiries” into SVB, which collapsed suddenly March 10, touching off a crisis of confidence that has led to the failure of two more regional lenders, and a panic in the stock market over the fate of others.

The investigations include “the firm’s business with SVB in or around March 2023, when SVB engaged the firm to assist with a proposed capital raise and SVB sold the firm a portfolio of securities,” Goldman’s filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission said.

A group of Credit Suisse Group bondholders in Asia challenged Switzerland’s banking regulator over the decision to write down about 16 billion Swiss francs (S$24 billion) of the bank’s riskiest debt, the first known move by wealthy investors in the region.

The filing was made in the Swiss courts on Wednesday, said Mr Mahesh Rai at Singapore-based Drew & Napier LLC. Mr Rai is acting for more than 60 investors across Asia for the case. He declined to specify the losses involved. 

The move appeals the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority’s (Finma) decision to prioritise shareholders over the additional tier-one bondholders, he said.

The Financial Conduct Authority has said it will change its approach to whistleblowers after a survey revealed widespread dissatisfaction among those who alert the regulator to wrongdoing.

The organisation acknowledged problems including whistleblowers not “feeling heard”; a lack of dialogue with them, which prompts doubts about the chances of a proper investigation; and frustration over a shortage of updates, sometimes interpreted as delay and inaction.

The majority of those who raised concerns with the regulator said they were “extremely or somewhat dissatisfied” with how they had been listened to and how issues had been explored, while most were dissatisfied with the outcome of their reports, an FCA study found.

When asked to rate overall satisfaction with the authority’s handling of their whistleblowing report, 15 of the 21 respondents said they were “extremely or somewhat dissatisfied”. Only two expressed any satisfaction.

The regulator said it was “disappointed” with the findings. “Whistleblowers are key in our efforts and we greatly value their contribution,” it said.

It pledged to make reforms, including improving the use of whistleblowers’ information, better communication over what has been done with their reports and engagement with the government over a review of whistleblowing legislation.

Fully backed by the Labor government, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) board yesterday resumed aggressively raising interest rates. It is deliberately inflicting more suffering on working-class households in order to further cut real wages and consumer spending.

Building workers walk past Reserve Bank of Australia in Sydney, Nov. 1, 2022. [AP Photo/Rick Rycroft]
In announcing its decision to raise its cash rate from 3.6 percent to 3.85 percent, the RBA explicitly targeted wages—which have already been cut 4.5 percent in real terms over the past year. It said this level of “wages growth” was consistent with the bank’s inflation target, but it would continue to “pay close attention” to labour costs.

Real wages had fallen, RBA governor Philip Lowe told an RBA Board Dinner brimming with business leaders in Perth last night, but if inflation continued “workers will seek larger pay rises.” He said the “labour market” was “still very tight.” Therefore, the RBA was determined to pursue its course, “even if it is difficult for some people in the short term.”

The former manager used inside information from a deal Morgan Stanley was advising on to generate HK$4.2mn in profits for herself and a friend.

A Hong Kong court has granted an interim injunction order allowing the freezing of about HKD 8.2 million in assets in an insider dealing case.

The case was brought by the SFC (Securities and Futures Commission), which suspects two individuals – Ms Tsang Ching Yi and Mr Barry Kwok Sze Lok – of engaging in insider trading in the stock of I.T Limited, a software company that was privatised in 2021.

The SFC alleged that Tsang obtained information relating to the privatisation of I.T Limited through her employment as a manager at an investment bank, and shared such information with her friend Kwok, before both traded in the stock using the inside information.

Though not named in the SFC’s statement, the investment bank was identified through Tsang’s licensing record to be Morgan Stanley – which was the adviser for I.T Limited’s privatisation offer.

The Fed had to choose between capitulation on inflation or letting the banking crisis mushroom. The twin crashes in the US’s commercial real estate and bond market have collided with $9 trillion uninsured deposits in its banking system, which can vanish in an afternoon in the cyber age.

The second and third biggest bank failures in US history have followed in quick succession. The Treasury and Federal Reserve would like us to believe that they are “idiosyncratic”. That is a dangerous evasion. Almost half of America’s 4,800 banks are already burning through their capital buffers. They may not have to mark all losses to market under US accounting rules but that does not make them solvent. Somebody will take those losses.

“It’s spooky. Thousands of banks are under water,” said Prof Amit Seru, a banking expert at Stanford University. “Let’s not pretend that this is just about Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic. A lot of the US banking system is potentially insolvent.” The full shock of monetary tightening by the Fed has yet to hit. A great edifice of debt faces a refinancing cliff edge over the next six quarters.

Only then will we learn whether the US financial system can safely deflate the excess leverage induced by extreme monetary stimulus during the pandemic. A Hoover Institution report by Prof Seru and a group of experts calculates that more than 2,315 US banks are sitting on assets worth less than their liabilities. The market value of their loan portfolios is $2 trillion (£1.6 trillion) lower than book value.

These lenders include big beasts.

A report in the Wall Street Journal, published on the newspaper’s front page Monday morning, links important figures in the US business and political elite to financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who died in a federal prison in Manhattan in 2019 under circumstances that strongly suggest he was murdered to keep him quiet.

The Journal reporters wrote that they had gained access to Epstein’s private diary and other documents, “which include thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017, [that] haven’t been previously reported.” The diary listed meetings with dozens of individuals, though it supplied little information about the content or subject of the meetings. The bulk of these engagements were at Epstein’s palatial townhouse in Manhattan.

Among those prominently mentioned in the Journal report were two high-level officials of Democratic administrations: William Burns, currently CIA director, formerly deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration; and Kathryn Ruemmler, currently general counsel for Goldman Sachs investment bank, who was White House counsel in the Obama administration.

The Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Valencia denounced several months ago the CEO of Gedesco, Antonio Aynat, for a possible environmental crime in the Albufera of Valencia, which has led to the opening of legal proceedings for which the main executive of the financial services company for companies and the self-employed is under investigation.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office decided to denounce Aynat after an intervention by the Environmental Unit of the Local Police of Valencia, which acted after being warned by the management of the natural park in May 2021 of the existence of irregular works in a place of the protected area known as Tancat de L’Alcatí. There is the headquarters of the Valencian Association of Lateen Sailing, which is chaired by the businessman.

The CEO of one of the largest non-banking financial institutions in Spain leased the land in 2014 to a community of irrigators in order to install there a sports and business club dedicated to lateen sailing. It is, according to the complaint, a plot located on undeveloped land, within the Albufera natural park, the Natura 2000 Network and in a cataloged wetland area. Its legal use is exclusively agricultural.

Shares in Asia are set to decline after Wall Street fell on renewed concern about the banking sector before a Federal Reserve decision on Wednesday where US policymakers are expected to raise interest rates.

Equity futures in Japan, Australia and Hong Kong all declined, while US contracts edged lower in early Asian trade. The S&P 500 slipped 1.2 per cent on Wednesday, with the financial sector the second-worst performer after energy. 

US regional lenders PacWest Bancorp and Western Alliance Bancorp both slid at least 15 per cent just a day after J.P. Morgan Chase’s acquisition of First Republic Bank seemed to bolster confidence in the sector.

The decline in energy stocks followed a 5.3 per cent drop for the US oil price, the biggest decline since July, in a sign of unease about global growth. The decline stabilised early on Wednesday.

NEW YORK – US stocks ended the trading day lower on Tuesday, with regional bank stocks recording another day of plummeting values ahead of an expected rate hike from the Federal Reserve.

The Fed is widely anticipated to raise its benchmark lending rate for a 10th – and possibly final – time on Wednesday as it looks to tackle high inflation through interest rate hikes.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 1.1 per cent lower, at 33,684.46.

The broad-based S&P 500 fell 1.2 per cent to 4,119.60, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index declined 1.1 per cent to 12,080.51.

Crude oil futures also finished the day down more than five percent on regional banking concerns.

NEW YORK – Vice, the brash digital media disrupter that charmed giants like Disney and Fox into investing before a stunning crash landing, is preparing to file for bankruptcy, according to two people with knowledge of its operations.

The filing could come in the coming weeks, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorised to discuss the potential bankruptcy on the record.

The company has been looking for a buyer, and still might find one, to avoid declaring bankruptcy.

More than five companies have expressed interest in acquiring Vice, according to a person briefed on the discussions.