Treasurer Jim Chalmers says changes will help with cost of living and ‘Australians hate paying’ the surcharges
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Debit and credit card surcharges will be gone by October under Reserve Bank reforms, with big banks likely to foot the bill for the cost-of-living measures.
The new rules, announced on Tuesday, will enable businesses to remove added fees on Mastercard, visa and eftpos card payments.
Continue reading...City regulator reduces number of loan agreements in line for compensation from 14m to 12m
Victims of the car finance scandal will be in line for payouts worth £830 on average, as the City regulator tightened the rules of its compensation scheme to cover fewer contracts.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) released the final details of its planned redress programme, saying it had narrowed the number of loan agreements eligible for payouts from 14m to 12.1m contracts.
Continue reading...Law firm is preparing claim on behalf of 30,000 consumers who fear the FCA’s redress scheme will shortchange them
Lloyds Banking Group is facing a court battle with 30,000 aggrieved car loan customers who are to abandon the City regulator’s official redress scheme amid fears it will shortchange consumers and favour lenders.
The claims law firm Courmacs Legal is planning to file a £66m omnibus claim on behalf of borrowers who believe they were financially harmed by car loan contracts set up by Lloyds’ motor finance arm, Black Horse.
Continue reading...Milan-based bank plans to up its near-30% stake in German lender to trigger formal talks despite strong opposition from Berlin
Two European banking powerhouses have become embroiled in a €35bn (£30bn) takeover battle after Italy’s UniCredit stepped up its long-running pursuit of German lender Commerzbank, despite strong opposition from the German government.
UniCredit first took a stake of 9% in Commerzbank in September 2024 and has since built up its holding to just under 30%. It said on Monday it was pushing to increase that holding further and push the rival lender into formal merger talks.
Continue reading...Figure above 40% every week since early January as report says situation ‘no longer in freefall nor in recovery’
Workers are heading back to offices across the UK in droves, pushing office occupancy to the highest since before the Covid-19 pandemic, as an expert described the numbers as “no longer in freefall nor in recovery mode but settling”.
Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chasehave led the push with strict return-to-office mandates despite anger among many employees about being ordered back to the office five days a week. Companies in other sectors have also increased days in the office but many businesses, including law and accounting firms, still allow staff to work remotely two days a week.
Continue reading...Banks accused of ‘organisational deficiencies’ relating to scam that crashed Mozambique economy nearly a decade ago
Switzerland’s federal prosecutor has filed charges against the failed bank Credit Suisse and its new owner, UBS, over the long-running “tuna bonds” loan scandal that crashed Mozambique’s economy nearly a decade ago.
The Swiss attorney general said on Monday that it had brought money-laundering charges against an unnamed employee of Credit Suisse, but was also taking action against the lender and its rival-turned-owner UBS.
Continue reading...Exclusive: It follows calls from US senator Elizabeth Warren to investigate bank executives including ex-Barclays boss Jes Staley
US regulators say they are taking allegations that top banks may have facilitated Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activity “very seriously”, as they faced calls to investigate executives including the former Barclays boss Jes Staley.
In correspondence seen by the Guardian, bosses from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) said they had reviewed a letter from the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, which raised concerns over bankers’ alleged support for the convicted child sex offender Epstein.
Continue reading...Australia stopped buying fuel directly from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine but has imported more than 3m tonnes of its oil products since 2023
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Millions of tonnes of Russian oil have been traded through a port part-owned by Macquarie Bank and potentially sold on to Australian businesses, new data shows.
The identification of a new link between Australia and the trade in Russian-origin products exposes further gaps in government sanctions, as Australia lags behind the EU and the UK in tightening import rules.
Continue reading...Bank says it alerted US of ‘suspicious’ transactions just weeks after paedophile was found dead in New York jail cell
JP Morgan warned the US government about more than $1bn in transactions linked to Jeffrey Epstein that were possibly related to reports of human trafficking, new documents confirm.
The largest bank in the US filed a suspicious activity report (SAR) in 2019, just weeks after Epstein was found dead in a New York jail cell, about transactions linked to the paedophile financier and prominent business figures. It also flagged wire transfers made by Epstein to Russian banks.
Continue reading...CEO says fiscal discipline should be balanced with ‘policies that create stability, consistency and support growth’
NatWest Group’s chief executive has warned the government against increasing taxes on banks in the autumn budget as the high street lender reported a 30% jump in profits.
Paul Thwaite said he understood the “difficult choices” that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, had to make in order to help close a potential £30bn shortfall in the public finances but argued she needed to “balance fiscal discipline” with “policies that create stability, consistency and support growth”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Automated systems have generated ‘cookie cutter’ responses that fail to account for individual circumstances, financial watchdog says
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Banks are outright ignoring or offering “cookie cutter” responses to a rising number of hardship requests from struggling customers, despite repeated regulatory crackdowns.
Nearly 2,900 customers complained their bank had failed to respond to pleas for assistance in 2024-25, new data from the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (Afca) showed.
Continue reading...Signs of credit stress send markets in Europe and Asia down, while investors turn to safe haven assets
European stock markets fell on Friday and gold hit a record high after two US regional banks said they had been exposed to millions of dollars of bad loans and alleged fraud.
Signs of credit stress rattled markets across Europe and Asia. In London the FTSE 100 fell 0.9%, Germany’s Dax fell 1.8%, Italy’s FTSE Mib fell 1.5%, the Ibex in Spain was off 0.3% and France’s Cac 40 dropped 0.2%.
Continue reading...FCA cites study showing victims’ ‘red flags’ are often missed and calls for improved monitoring systems
The City regulator has called on banks and payment firms to bring in stricter controls protecting customers from romance fraud after a study showed a number of missed “red flags” that led to people losing huge sums of money.
The review by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) highlighted one case where someone lost £428,000, another where a customer made 403 payments totalling £72,000 to a fraudster and a case where someone wanted money to transfer cryptocurrency to their “partner” in Iraq.
Continue reading...Bank joins smaller competitors in changing interest-related restrictions on some accounts – despite RBA leaving interest rates unchanged in September
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Westpac is tightening conditions on its savings account for younger customers as growing numbers of banks make it harder to earn advertised interest rates on their deposits.
The bank has joined smaller competitors in changing interest-related restrictions on some accounts – despite the Reserve Bank of Australia leaving interest rates on hold in September.
Continue reading...Deal will mean Hang Seng Bank’s shares are taken off local stock exchange as HSBC doubles down on Asian business
HSBC is shelling out £10bn to take its Hong Kong subsidiary private, in a move it said was designed to take advantage of the financial hub’s role as a “super-connector” between China and global markets.
The deal will result in Hang Seng Bank’s shares being taken off the local stock exchange as London-headquartered HSBC doubles down on its Asian business and snaps up the 36.5% of shares it does not already own.
Continue reading...Deal will mean Hang Seng Bank’s shares are taken off local stock exchange as HSBC doubles down on Asian business
HSBC is shelling out £10bn to take its Hong Kong subsidiary private, in a move it said was designed to take advantage of the financial hub’s role as a “super-connector” between China and global markets.
The deal will result in Hang Seng Bank’s shares being taken off the local stock exchange as London-headquartered HSBC doubles down on its Asian business and snaps up the 36.5% of shares it does not already own.
Continue reading...Investor jitters follow report by IPPR, with stock market value of sector cut by almost £8bn in morning trading
UK bank shares tumbled on Friday, cutting the stock market value of the sector by almost £8bn in morning trading, as fresh calls for a windfall tax on large lenders in the autumn budget spooked investors.
Calls for a tax grab, in a paper written by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank, took a toll on some of the UK’s biggest high street banks. NatWest Group suffered the biggest drop on Friday morning, registering a decline of as much as 5% in its share price, while Lloyds Banking Group and Barclays followed close behind, falling 4.5% and 3.6% respectively. HSBC dropped more than 1%.
Continue reading...World’s largest wealth fund says it has excluded bulldozer maker and five Israeli banking groups on ethics grounds
The world’s largest wealth fund has excluded Caterpillar, the construction equipment manufacturer, over Israel’s use of its bulldozers to destroy Palestinian property in Gaza and the West Bank.
Norway’s $2tn (£1.5tn) fund said on Monday it had excluded Caterpillar and five Israeli banking groups on ethics grounds.
Continue reading...Australia’s biggest bank delivers bumper payout to shareholders as CBA vows to end lending to coal companies with no net zero plans
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The Commonwealth bank has posted a record cash profit, sparking renewed calls for Australia’s biggest bank to repay more than 2 million low-income customers $270m in fees – something it has refused to do.
CBA recorded $10.25bn in annual cash profits for the year to June – a 4% lift on the previous year – and gave a bumper $2.60 payout per share to shareholders.
Continue reading...Some higher-earning couples with smaller deposits could borrow extra £130,000 as a result of overnight changes
Some couples applying for a Santander mortgage will see the maximum they can borrow increase by £130,000 overnight after the bank loosened its lending rules.
Santander is the latest in a line of lenders to allow some borrowers to access bigger mortgages after intervention by the City regulator and new guidelines from the Bank of England designed to help more people on to the housing ladder.
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