Category Archives: Banking

Protesters call on banks to ‘drop African debt’ in wake of Covid

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World’s poorest nations saddled with ‘imprisoning’ debt, hampering responses to the pandemic, say activists protesting HSBC meeting

Activists at a demonstration outside the annual general meeting of HSBC in London have demanded the bank and other financial giants provide debt relief to African countries hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

In an attempt to highlight the role of private creditors in the debt crises of the world’s poorest countries, campaigners with “drop the debt” banners gathered outside HSBC’s AGM at the Southbank Centre.

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Goldman Sachs executive quits after making millions from Dogecoin

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The crypto asset is down more than 30% this week but is still up by more than 1,000% from the start of 2021

A senior manager at Goldman Sachs in London has quit the US investment bank after making millions from investing in Dogecoin, the joke crypto asset which has risen by more than 1,000% in value this year.

City sources said Aziz McMahon, a managing director and head of emerging market sales, had resigned from the bank after making money from investing in the digital currency based on the Doge internet meme.

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UK to come under scrutiny in Italy’s largest mafia trial in decades

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Witnesses will be asked to respond to claims the ’Ndrangheta has laundered billions of euros in City of London

In a high-security, 1,000-capacity courtroom converted from a call centre, Italy’s largest mafia trial in three decades is under way in Lamezia Terme, Calabria. About 900 witnesses are set to testify against more than 350 defendants, including politicians and officials charged with being members of the ’Ndrangheta, Italy’s most powerful criminal group.

Several of the defendants will be asked to respond to charges of money laundering over establishing companies in the UK with the alleged purpose of simulating legitimate economic activity.

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Credit Suisse executives depart after Archegos and Greensill losses

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Directors’ bonuses scrapped as chief risk officer and investment bank chief exit

Credit Suisse has cancelled the bonuses of its directors, slashed its dividend and announced the departure of two senior executives as the bank revealed £3.4bn in losses from the collapse of the Archegos investment fund.

The Swiss bank is reeling from heavy exposure to Archegos and the business bank Greensill, which suffered successive but unrelated financial blow-ups.

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Top banks could be investigated over $20bn fire sale of hedge fund assets

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Collapse of Archegos has reportedly prompted SEC and FCA inquiries into Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Nomura and others

UK and US regulators are looking into whether global investment banks breached rules by holding group discussions shortly before launching a fire sale of nearly $20bn worth of assets belonging to the distressed hedge fund Archegos Capital Management, according to reports.

The Securities Exchange Commission is said to have requested further information from major US banks Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, as well as Japan’s Nomura and Swiss lender Credit Suisse about a meeting with Archegos founder Bill Hwang on Thursday.

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Regulators around the world monitor collapse of US hedge fund

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Liquidation of Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management sparked a fire sale of more than $20bn assets

Financial regulators across the world are monitoring the collapse of the New York-based billionaire Bill Hwang’s personal hedge fund.

The sudden liquidation of Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management sparked a fire sale of more than $20bn assets that has left some of the world’s biggest investment banks nursing billions of dollars of losses.

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Goldman Sachs junior banker speaks out over ’18-hour shifts and low pay’

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Younger staff in London follow revolt in US offices over remote-working conditions

The reputation of Goldman Sachs as the most desirable employer for aspiring investment bankers is at stake. Legendary for its pulling power with the best graduates, the bank is now facing a rebellion in its lower ranks.

Junior staff who used to tolerate long working hours thanks to office camaraderie have been forced to manage burnout at home, alone, throughout the pandemic. Some have started demanding change, while others are plotting their exit. What began as a little local trouble at a US office in February has now spread to the UK.

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Big banks’ trillion-dollar finance for fossil fuels ‘shocking’, says report

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Coal, oil and gas firms have received $3.8tn in finance since the Paris climate deal in 2015

The world’s biggest 60 banks have provided $3.8tn of financing for fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate deal in 2015, according to a report by a coalition of NGOs.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic cutting energy use, overall funding remains on an upward trend and the finance provided in 2020 was higher than in 2016 or 2017, a fact the report’s authors and others described as “shocking”.

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Group of junior bankers at Goldman Sachs claim ‘inhumane’ work conditions

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First-year US analysts complete internal survey, describing ‘sleep deprivation’ and workplace ‘abuse’

Junior bankers at Goldman Sachs say they are facing “inhumane” conditions at the investment bank, including 100-hour work weeks and “abuse” from colleagues which has severely affected their mental health.

The responses from the poll participants – 13 investment banking analysts in the US – have shed light on the gruelling demands on first-year analysts, a cohort that features some of the brightest recruits hired annually by Goldman.

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City firms made plans in Brexit run-up to move assets worth £100bn to EU – survey

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Data from EY highlights last-minute transfers in order to hold on to European business

City firms revealed in the final months of 2020 that they planned to shift nearly £100bn in assets to the EU, taking the total value of assets lost to the bloc since the Brexit vote to £1.3 trillion, according to a new survey.

The data from consulting group EY pointed to a last-minute push by firms before 31 December after the UK-EU trade deal did not offer concessions for the UK’s dominant financial services sector. It forced companies to move staff and assets to the continent in order to continue serving EU customers.

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Lloyds and HSBC are shedding office space … did they have too much to begin with?

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Why there may be more to the announcement of Covid-inspired cuts than meets the eye

Here comes another bank that has decided, apparently definitively, that working practices will not return to their pre-pandemic norms. Lloyds Banking Group says it plans to shed 20% of its office space. Earlier this week, HSBC said it would get rid of 40%.

These figures are so dramatic that they invite suspicion. Have managements really come to the firm view that working from home is so popular that employees’ demands for flexibility must be granted? Or did these banks have too much office space in the first place and now wish to save a few quid?

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HSBC looks to Asia after profits plunge 34%

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More executive roles are expected to relocate to home base of Hong Kong as part of Asia shift, where most of its earnings come from

HSBC, Britain’s biggest bank, has recorded a 34% drop in profit for 2020 as it prepares to double down on its operations in Hong Kong and China despite concern about the political crackdown in the former UK colony.

The bank said on Tuesday that pre-tax profit was down from $13.3bn (£9.4bn) in 2019 to $8.8bn in the 12 months to 31 December, while the adjusted profit before tax of $12.1bn (£8.6bn) fell 76% on the year before.

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Human rights and climate crisis give HSBC an image problem

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The bank, which is due to reveal its annual results this week, faces more challenges than the impact of Covid-19 on profits

HSBC’s chief executive Noel Quinn has had an unenviable first year on the job. In 2020 alone, Quinn rolled out a major restructuring plan that will involve at least 35,000 job cuts, battled the financial impact of Covid in both Asia and Europe, and steered the bank through a geopolitical storm over its response to democracy clashes in Hong Kong.

Now he is set to preside over the bank’s second straight year of declining annual profits.

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Former NAB executive Rosemary Rogers jailed for defrauding bank of millions of dollars

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The former chief of staff to the CEO was motivated by greed, personal gain and self-gratification, prosecutors argued

A former NAB executive who fraudulently enjoyed $5.4m worth of benefits unwittingly paid for by the bank has been jailed for at least four years and nine months.

Rosemary Rogers, 45, became so used to “enjoying the benefits of her fraud” she was unable to stop over a four-year period, acting judge Paul Conlon told the New South Wales district court on Wednesday.

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HSBC denies taking political stance over China’s crackdown in Hong Kong

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Bank’s chief executive, Noel Quinn, claims business not in position to question police requests

HSBC’s chief executive has denied taking a political stance on China’s crackdown in Hong Kong, claiming the bank was not in a position to question police requests when it agreed to freeze accounts of pro-democracy activists.

Questioned by MPs on the foreign affairs committee on Tuesday, Noel Quinn ruled out exiting the Hong Kong market in light of Beijing’s controversial new security laws, saying it “would only harm” local customers.

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Bitcoin hits record high on 12th anniversary of its creation

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Cryptocurrency passes $30,000 as financial institutions express growing interest

Bitcoin has surged to a record high amid rising interest from investors and claims that the volatile cryptocurrency is on the way to becoming a mainstream payment method.

Having quadrupled in value during 2020, bitcoin began 2021 strongly by breaking through the $30,000 (£22,000) mark for the first time, less than three weeks after first trading above $20,000.

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British banks under pressure over £45m loans to firm with links to Myanmar military

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Campaigners say the deals revealed in new report are a breach of firms’ human rights responsibilities

Human rights groups are demanding that two of Britain’s biggest banks explain why they have lent tens of millions of pounds to a technology company building a telecoms network that is part-owned and used by the Myanmar military.

HSBC and Standard Chartered have loaned $60m (£44.5m) to Vietnamese telecom giant Viettel in the last four years, a period when the Myanmar military has been accused of committing war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Viettel is a major investor in Mytel, a Myanmar mobile network that, since its launch in June 2018, has grown to become the second-biggest operator in the country with over 10 million users.

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‘There’s nobody here’: Covid turns Wall Street into a ghost town

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Exodus that started after 9/11 has accelerated — and many fear New York’s financial district will not recover

“They used to stand at the bar three deep,” says John Moran, surveying the long, empty counter at Killarney Rose, a Wall Street bar that would, in another era, have been stuffed with early-shift construction workers and, at lunch and late into the evening, suited bankers.

The world’s pre-eminent financial thoroughfare – at least throughout the 20th century – is a ghost of what it once was. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are still located here, but dozens of financial institutions have emptied out from New York’s financial district in an exodus that started in the wake of 9/11 and has been hastened by Covid.

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Kremlin critic says UK bank account shut because of Russian ‘black PR’

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NatWest denies accusation made by Bill Browder in thinktank report into practice of ruining reputations

A longstanding critic of Kremlin corruption has accused NatWest of closing his bank account in the UK because it had been influenced by an intense and pervasive “black PR” campaign mounted against him by Russian actors in their home country.

“Black PR” is a term referring to a series of connected practices used by Russian state and non-state actors seeking to discredit individuals as part of political or business disputes, and can involve trying to create or obtain kompromat (compromising material) or generating fake media reports.

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‘People are suffering’: G20 to call on private lenders to suspend debt repayments

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At this weekend’s meeting in Riyadh, leaders will urge action to free up resources to help stricken developing countries combat Covid-19

From his house in Nairobi, banker turned financial vlogger James Mumo contemplated the state of Kenya’s post-pandemic economy. “It’s hopeless for a normal businessperson just trying to make a living for their family,” he says.

The economic crisis caused by the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns has left many struggling: 1.7 million Kenyans lost their jobs between April and June 2020, while 20.8 million borrowed funds using a programme provided by popular mobile carrier Safaricom, double last year’s number. One financial services conglomerate headquartered in Nairobi bought a yard to store all the cars it had repossessed after customers couldn’t repay their loans.

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