Category Archives: Banking

Senior Credit Suisse executive quits over ‘extraordinary’ spying scandal

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Bank rules surveillance of outgoing head of wealth management Iqbal Khan was ‘wrong and disproportionate’

Credit Suisse has sacked its chief operating officer over an “extraordinary” James Bond-style corporate espionage scandal in which the bank hired private detectives to tail a senior executive and his wife through the streets of Zurich following a row with his boss at a cocktail party.

Switzerland’s second-biggest bank said on Tuesday that Pierre-Olivier Bouée had left with immediate effect after the board of directors ruled that the seven-day spying operation was “wrong and disproportionate and has resulted in severe reputational damage to the bank”.

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‘The men who plundered Europe’: bankers on trial for siphoning €60bn

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Martin Shields and Nick Diable are accused of tax fraud in ‘cum-ex’ scandal that exposes City’s pursuit of profit

They have been called “the men who plundered Europe”: a group of cowboy traders, seasoned tax lawyers and mathematical whizz kids who are alleged to have conspired in the heart of the City of London to siphon at least €60bn in taxpayers’ money from the state coffers of several EU countries.

In Britain, the so-called “cum-ex” scandal, named after the complex derivatives juggling act employed, gained little attention amid the frenzied debate around the UK’s departure from the European Union when the fraud scheme was discovered in 2017.

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British bankers on trial in Germany charged with €447m fraud

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UK pair accused of defrauding German state through ‘cum-ex’ share trading scheme

Two British investment bankers have gone on trial in Bonn in what German media have called “the biggest financial fraud trial” in the country’s postwar history.

The two British citizens, Martin Shields, 41, and Nicholas Diable, 38, are accused of having defrauded the German state of €447.5m (£405m) from London’s banking district with so-called cum-ex trading schemes, a complex shell game of share transactions.

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Shares across Asia fall sharply amid US-Chinese trade tensions

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Investors seek safe havens such as US treasuries and gold as the superpower standoff shows no sign of being resolved

Shares in Australia and across Asia Pacific have fallen sharply amid a new flare-up of US-Chinese trade tensions.

Despite a senior Chinese leader saying Beijing wanted to resolve the dispute with “calm negotiations”, indices were deep in the red on Monday.

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Deutsche Bank to pay $16m to settle US ‘princelings’ case

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Regulator had said it corruptly hired unqualified relatives of foreign officials to win business

Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay a $16m (£13m) fine to US authorities overallegations that it hired unqualified relatives of powerful Russian and Chinese government officials to win business.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged that Germany’s largest lender had used false books to record the hirings, which meant the relatives – known in China as “princelings” – did not have to go through rigorous interview processes.

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Chase Bank cancels all credit card debt for Canadian customers

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Clients ‘over the moon’ at US lender’s move as it withdraws from market

Chase Bank is forgiving all outstanding debt owed by customers of its two Canadian credit cards as it exits the country’s market.

Customers using the Amazon.ca Rewards Visa and the Marriott Rewards Premier Visa were pleasantly surprised to find the balance on their credit cards had been wiped clean.

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1MDB: Malaysia files charges against 17 current and ex-Goldman Sachs bosses

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Bank has been under scrutiny for its role in helping to raise $6.5bn through bond offerings

Malaysia has filed criminal charges against 17 current and former directors at subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs Group in a multibillion-dollar corruption investigation at state fund 1MDB, the attorney general said on Friday.

Goldman Sachs has been under scrutiny for its role in helping to raise $6.5bn through bond offerings for 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), the subject of corruption and money-laundering investigations in at least six countries.

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Capital One: hacker stole data of over 100m Americans

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FBI has arrested individual who obtained names, addresses, phone numbers and birth dates of people in US and Canada

A hacker gained access to personal information from more than 100 million Capitol One credit applications, the bank said Monday as federal authorities arrested a suspect.

The data breach has affected around 100 million people in the US and 6 million in Canada.

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Santander says top banker made secret tape in job dispute

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Bank accuses Andrea Orcel of ‘dubious moral behaviour’ over its withdrawn job offer

Spain’s Santander has accused one of Europe’s highest-profile banker of “dubious ethical and moral behaviour” after he sued the bank for €100m (£90m) when it withdrew an offer to make him chief executive.

The bank accused Andrea Orcel of making secret recordings during the dispute.

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Deutsche Bank starts cutting London jobs with 18,000 at risk worldwide

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Some staff in London reported to be in tears after hearing their jobs have gone

Deutsche Bank started slashing thousands of jobs in the City of London and in New York only hours after announcing a drastic plan to reduce its global workforce by 18,000.

Germany’s biggest lender employs almost 8,000 people in the UK, with 7,000 in London, which is one of the main hubs for its global investment bank, where the bulk of the job losses will be focused. The jobs being cut make up about a fifth of Deutsche’s global workforce of 91,500.

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Wine and chauffeurs: ANZ under pressure after NZ boss’s $400,000 in expenses revealed

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Questions over how chief executive David Hisco was allowed to run up large expense accounts and over wife’s purchase of a bank property

Pressure is mounting on the ANZ bank board after New Zealand’s central bank ordered two independent reviews into the company’s conduct following the departure of its NZ chief executive who ran up expense accounts averaging more than $400,000 a year.

The bank’s chairman, former New Zealand prime minister Sir John Key, last week announced the departure of David Hisco, who is an Australian, after the company learned of his spending for “non-monetary benefits” including a personal chauffeur service and wine cellaring.

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UK settles £1.3bn claim by Iranian bank over trade ban damages

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In 2014 supreme court ruled sanctions on Bank Mellat had been unlawful

The UK government has made a last minute out-of-court deal to settle a £1.3bn damages claim made by an Iranian bank over a UK trading ban.

The undisclosed settlement to Bank Mellat on the eve of what was expected to be a five-week trial raises questions about how big the UK taxpayer’s bill is likely to be, as well as how the UK will transfer the payment to circumvent the comprehensive sanctions regime imposed by the US, which affects the bank.

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Company part-owned by Jared Kushner got $90m from unknown offshore investors since 2017

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Overseas investment flowed to Cadre while Trump’s son-in-law works as US envoy, raising conflict of interest questions

A real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump.

Investment has flowed from overseas to the company, Cadre, while Kushner works as an international envoy for the US, according to corporate filings and interviews. The money came through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven that guarantees corporate secrecy.

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Tax authorities mount raids on 19 German banks and homes

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Investigation is linked to Panama Papers and part of money laundering allegations

Eleven banks and eight private homes and offices across Germany have been raided by police and tax investigators as part of a wide-ranging investigation into tax evasion.

The raids, which began at dawn on Wednesday and went on into the afternoon, were part of the same investigation started last November over money laundering allegations linked to the so-called Panama Papers scandal, alleged to involve Deutsche Bank.

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Ferrexpo could have done without the side show to its Deloitte spat

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A wiser board might have stopped Chris Mawe’s £400,000 share sale the morning before auditor quit

It is a rare for an auditor to quit the role at a London-listed FTSE 250 firm. So one might conclude it was merely unfortunate that Chris Mawe, the finance director at Ferrexpo, chose last Thursday morning to sell £400,000-worth of shares, just before events moved rapidly at the Swiss-based miner of iron ore in Ukraine. In the evening of the same day, Deloitte quit. On Friday morning, when the firm’s resignation was made public, Ferrexpo’s share price plunged by 28%.

The company had not received Deloitte’s letter of resignation at the time of the share sale, so there is – to be clear – no suggestion rules were broken. Even so, one has to ask if it was sensible for Mawe to sell last Thursday when so many unanswered questions hung in the air.

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Ending the Iranian sanctions waiver could be own goal for Trump

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Preventing Iran’s oil from reaching the market will raise oil prices and US business costs

The past two and a bit years have shown that it is naive to expect Donald Trump’s strategic and economic policies to demonstrate coherence. Even so, the lack of joined-up thinking in the decision to end the waiver against sanctions from nations that buy oil from Iran takes some beating.

Related: US toughens stance on Iran, ending exemptions from oil sanctions

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Deutsche Bank faces action over $20bn Russian money-laundering scheme

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Exclusive: in confidential internal report seen by the Guardian, bank says scandal has hurt global brand

Germany’s troubled Deutsche Bank faces fines, legal action and the possible prosecution of “senior management” because of its role in a $20bn Russian money-laundering scheme, a confidential internal report seen by the Guardian says.

The bank admits there is a high risk that regulators in the US and UK will take “significant disciplinary action” against it. Deutsche concedes that the scandal has hurt its “global brand” – and is likely to cause “client attrition”, loss of investor confidence and a decline in its market value.

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Mark Carney tells global banks they cannot ignore climate change dangers

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Financial sector warned it risks losses from extreme weather and its stakes in polluting firms

The global financial system faces an existential threat from climate change and must take urgent steps to reform, the governors of the Bank of England and France’s central bank have warned, writing in the Guardian.

In an article published in the Guardian on Wednesday aimed at the international financial community, Mark Carney, the Bank’s governor, and François Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of the Banque de France, said financial regulators, banks and insurers around the world had to “raise the bar” to avoid catastrophe.

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Mastercard ruling: almost every UK adult could receive payout

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Lawsuit could benefit 46 million people even if they have never owned the credit card

Almost every adult in the UK could receive a payout of up to £300 from Mastercard after a court ruling paved the way for a £14bn class action lawsuit.

The legal action taken by former financial ombudsman Walter Merricks claims that 46 million UK consumers paid higher prices in shops over a 16-year period because of allegedly excessive transaction fees charged by Mastercard.

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Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank confirm merger talks

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Unions warn merger of two German lenders could put up to 30,000 jobs at risk

Deutsche Bank has confirmed it is in merger talks with rival Commerzbank, putting an end to months of speculation over a potential tie-up that stands to unsettle the German banking landscape.

While the move has been touted as a route to greater profitability for the troubled lenders, unions have warned that the merger could put up to 30,000 jobs at risk.

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