Financial Communique » bank

Irish Central Bank lowered its economic forecast

Viliyana Filipova — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:25:13 +0000

The Central Bank in Dublin lowered its forecast for growth in the Irish economy in 2012, questioning the sustainability of the recovery in the country, which last year managed to overcome the recession. This year the bank predicts growth of just 0.5%, citing the deepening debt crisis in the euro area and problems with exports. In October, the bank expected growth this year to accelerate to 1.8%. Gross national product (GNP) of the country, often taken for a better indicator of the Irish economy by gross domestic product (GDP) because it does not include dividends and profits exported from Irish subsidiaries of foreign companies are expected to decrease by 0.7%. Ireland returned to growth in the first half of 2011, after three years of recession. This prompted the European leaders to identify Ireland as an example of a country that has a positive growth despite the measures for budget savings. The Bank states that Dublin is on track to meet the pledged in 2012 to decrease its budget deficit to 8.6 percent of GDP, but that the economic downturn makes the implementation of the fiscal targets set for 2013 more difficult. In 2013, the bank expects growth to accelerate to about 2.1%.
This year, the institution is forecast to slow export growth, and unemployment rising to 14.6% after the marked decline in 2011 to 14.1%.

Moody’s decreased the forecast for the Russian banking sector

Viliyana Filipova — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:50:29 +0000

The International rating agency Moody’s today lowered its forecast for the Russian banking system as a whole to “negative” from “stable”, said in a statement posted on the official website of the agency.
“Changing the outlook for the Russian banking system to” negative “reflects concerns that weakness in the global economy and volatility in financial markets will weaken the operational situation in Russia, reflecting adversely on the banks by systemic liquidity squeeze, slower credit growth and depressed asset quality”, was send in a press communique. The report reflects the agency’s expectations for the underlying credit conditions in the banking sector for the next 12-18 months. From Moody’s predicts that because of weak economic recovery growth of real gross domestic product of Russia will slow to 2.8% in 2012 from this year’s expected 3.8%. The Russian economic growth depends mainly on oil prices, which increases the risk that global demand for energy may further affect the operational environment for Russian banks in the forecast period.
“Volatility in global financial markets, limited access to common funding continued rapid movement of capital and the pressure on the ruble has led to pressure on liquidity in the Russian banking system”, said Eugene Tarzimanov, vice president of Moody’s.
“We expect this to continue and lead to slower credit growth, leading to reduced access to credit for the recipients, as banks increase interest rates and tighten conditions further. This will further lead to suppressed growth and an increase in reserves to cover bad loans”, he added.
The government support remains a key factor for creditors of Russian banks and we expect this to be no change noted by Moody’s, it does not fail to emphasize that the Russian Central Bank and Ministry of Finance of the country have already begun to support liquidity in response a deteriorating environment.
“We believe that this support is likely to increase, but there is no assurance that it will be available for medium and small banks in the private sector, if you need it”, says Tarzimanov. Despite the negative outlook for the Russian banking system, the individual ratings of 91% of banks that Moody’s places have a stable outlook, wrote in the agency.

Piraeus bank requested emergency govermnent aid

Viliyana Filipova — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:40:18 +0000

The fourth largest Greek Piraeus Bank was forced to use extraordinary financing from the central bank of the country, having had no acceptable collateral, to allow it access to cheaper funds from the European Central Bank. The Greek banks are dependent on the ECB for its liquidity after being excluded from the global financial markets because of concerns about the debt of his country. Piraeus is the first bank to recognize that special needs funding.
“We have access to mechanisms for emergency liquidity support in the third quarter,” said a representative of the credit institution, after it reported a loss of 820 million euros in the first half of the year. “This gives us more space for action, more flexibility. It is more expensive than loans from the ECB. The price is about 3.5% compared to 1.5% in the ECB”, he explained.The mechanism for emergency liquidity support is actually a loan from the Greek central bank credit institutions with low liquidity, but solvent. Affected by the steady outflow in deposits, the Greek credit institutions already have taken over 100 billion by the ECB, using as collateral Greek government bonds.
Piraeus said that its net loss for first half of the year due to participation in the program for voluntary debt exchange, which aims to alleviate the debt burden of Greece. This has resulted in a loss of 1 billion euros before tax.
Lowering of credit rating, the outflow of deposits and rising bad loans in the deepening recession forced the Greek banks to move to merge to increase their financial stability and in an attempt to regain access to credit markets. On Monday, the second and third Greek banks by market capitalization Alpha Bank and EFG Eurobank agreed to merge, thus forming the largest bank in Southeast Europe, which raised expectations for more such deals in the banking sector. Piraeus itself last year looking into options for a merger with state ATEbank, and previously refused a proposal by Marfin Popular. We crawl rumors of unification with the Greek Central Bank and Marfin Popular. Yesterday, however, the Executive Director of the Central Bank Apostolos Tamvakakis announced that financial institutions will not rush into major strategic moves before it has greater clarity on the outcome of the plan to exchange debt and check for bad loans of Greek banks, which currently runs. He said after the announced merger of Alpha Bank and EFG Eurobank expect more mergers.
“This opens the door for more changes that will shape a positive image in the banking system”, said the President of Bank of Greece Giorgos Provopoulos.

A Guide to Banks Loans: Where to Look for Commercial Loans

Viliyana Filipova — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:14:37 +0000

Commercial loans can serve a lot of purposes for both small and big companies from financing a business expansion to funding a project that would hopefully keep their business afloat. If you are a budding entrepreneur or an owner of a large corporation and are looking for a way to secure funds for something that you need for your business, read on for some tips on where you can start looking for a commercial loan that could help you out.
The best place to look for commercial loans would be online. This is primarily because a lot of banks today have already set up websites where they are able to offer plenty of information about the commercial loans that they have. As you go through your options, make sure that you would be researching about each type of commercial loan that you can get before making a decision.
You can also seek for the help of a financial advisor. Make sure, however, that the financial advisor you would be hiring knows your company or your business well and has a lot of knowledge about commercial loans so that you can be certain that he or she would be able to help you in getting the loan that would best address whatever financial need you have.
Another way to find out about some of the best commercial bank loans you can get would be to ask for recommendations from trusted business contacts who have recently taken out a bank loan for their company. You can also check out online reviews about some of the banks that are offering commercial loans.

The regulators want a global standard for risk-weighted assets

Viliyana Filipova — Tue, 03 May 2011 19:34:28 +0000

The banking regulators insist on a new international standard for credit risk assessment, which would ensure that efforts to strengthen the global banking system will not fall prey to the weaknesses caused by disparities in national standards. The British regulators are calling for reform in how to calculate risk-weighted assets (Risk-Weighted Assets, RWA). The RWA denominator used as a key indicator of banks’ capital position – the ratio of tier 1, the numerator is the main capital. The international regulators by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision adopted reforms, known as Basel III, in order to harmonize the definition of fixed capital. However, almost nothing was done for the standardization of RWA.
“This is an extremely important issue,” said Lord Turner, chairman of the British regulator Financial Services Authority. “We’ve enough time in the past two years to standardize the definition of capital as the numerator in the ratio of capital adequacy. Now we must look deeper consideration of the denominator, assessing whether the calculation of risk weighted assets was comparable in different banks in different countries.”
The incorrect calculation of risk-weighted assets may greatly distort capital ratios and potentially undermine the idea of introducing a global minimum value of the ratio of capital adequacy. Basel III requires tier 1 banks in the world is at least 7%. Andrew Haldan, the CEO of Bank of England said that the freedom granted to banks by the national regulators in the determination of RWA, and in particular in defining the criteria for “likelihood of failure” of the borrower may be inflated capital adequacy ratio by one third.
The calculation of RWA differs considerably in Europe and the USA. U.S. banks still RWA calculated on the basis of simplified and more specific rules set out in the original international capital standards – Basel I. The more complex Basel II formulas for calculating risk-weighted assets used by European banks offer opportunities for much more subjective interpretations by the banks and their regulators. According to Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, European banks have a competitive advantage because they “used a lot more aggressive RWA calculators from us.”

Ten US banks spent 16.3 million USD for lobbying

Viliyana Filipova — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:02:30 +0000

Ten U.S. banks that have received assistance with rescue money taxpayers have spent over 16 million dollars for lobbying during the first six months of the year. Money is spent to influence the participants in the debate on financial sector reform in the U.S. The regulatory data show that the ten banks that have received the largest share of state aid in 2008 and 2009 spent a lot to influence the views of members of Congress, representatives of the White House, Treasury, Federal Reserve, and some of the federal agencies involved in designing the new regulatory framework. “I’m not surprised that these banks have spent so much money because I saw every day how it happens,” said Ed Mirtsvinski, director of the US Public Interest Research Group. He said reform of the financial sector have worked over 2000 lobbyists. The new regulatory framework, signed by President Barack Obama in July, with volumes in 2300 pages and outlines new rules for derivative trading, charging and regulation of transactions with debit and credit cards. Many of the new rules laid down by banks as too harsh and cause discontent. The sum of 16.32 million dollars set aside for lobbying during the first half, with 26 percent more than the money allocated to this activity for the same period last year.
Most active lobbyists were JPMorgan Chase, which received 3.03 million dollars in the first half. Spent amount of Citigroup is 2.78 million dollars, and Goldman Sachs spent 2.77 million dollars. Top five is completed by Bank of America and Wells Fargo, which were separated by 2 million dollars. None of the financial institutions did not wish to comment on what was spent this money ends of AP material.

Three more banks were closed for a week in USA

Viliyana Filipova — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:49:37 +0000

The end of the working week has brought the closure of three U.S. banks. Thus the number of bank failures in the country since the beginning of the year amounted to 86 and is on track to improve last year’s record of 140 closed financial institutions – the highest number since 1992. Federal deposit insurance corporation in (FDIC) has closed banks in the states of Florida and New Mexico, Georgia, as buyers are financial institutions by the states. The three failure will cost the FDIC 284,6 million dollars. “The growing problems in commercial property and the ongoing crisis in housing loans will cause many bankruptcies,” said Walter Mix, managing director at financial consulting firm LECG LLC. Over the next three and a half years the bank will claim the bankruptcy 60 billion dollar fund to FDIC, said by the corporation on 22nd June. Fund out of deficit in third quarter of last year. Florida-based Peninsula Bank was purchased by Premier American Bank, owned by Bond Street Holdings LLC. January Holding buy two troubled banks. First National Bank of Jordan was been sold by the FDIC of Savannah Bank, a High Desert State Bank in New Mexico – the First American Bank. In the first quarter of this year the list of troubled banks FDIC counts 775 institutions with assets of 431 billion.
At the end of last year’s list were 702 credit institutions with assets of 403 billion dollars, said in a quarterly report to the regulator.

Former head of Anglo Irish Bank arrested for financial frauds

Viliyana Filipova — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:22:15 +0000

The former chairman of the Anglo Irish Bank has been arrested and questioned by local police for alleged financial irregularities. Sean Fitzpatrick has left his post in December 2008 after admitting it concealed personal loans for millions of euros from the bank. He had hidden data on loans from shareholders of the bank as a temporary transfer them to another bank before the period at the end of each year, not to declare them in balance. Last year, Anglo Irish Bank reported the largest loss in corporate history of Ireland – 4,1 billion for the six months to March. Expected results that are soon to announce the bank for the last reporting period, are worse. The Bank was one of the “stars” of business in Ireland during the prime real estate in the country, lends billions of euros for projects of entrepreneurs in Ireland and Britain. In 2009, however, it was nationalized because they were threatening to declare bankruptcy. Besides the hidden loans with the bank and other related scandals, including alleged scheme to support the artificial price of its shares and the entry of a huge loan from another bank as a deposit to a customer.
Last week, Fitzpatrick said the leadership of the bank that can not pay still owed 70 million loans, with the result that the bank has brought the case against him.

UBS with profit for the last quarter of 2009

Viliyana Filipova — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:45:02 +0000

The Swiss bank UBS came first profit since Oswald Gryubel assumed leadership of the company a year ago. Net profit for the financial institution for the fourth quarter of 2009 amounted to 1.205 billion Swiss francs (1.1 billion), Reuters reported. This is a significant improvement compared to the same period in 2008 when the bank had a loss of 9.58 billion francs. The improvement is partly due to a tax credit of 480 million Swiss francs, and the reduction of bonuses. However, under pressure from the continuing effects of the global financial crisis led to tax evasion cases in the United States and pressure from other countries for violation of banking secrecy to disclosure of tax crimes, UBS continues to lose the trust of its customers. “We are sure that the measures we took for withdrawal of capital from the bank’s clients are effective, but in the immediate future we expect to continue to draw,” says Oswald Gryubel CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors Vilidzhar Kasper in a letter to investors.
The Customers of UBS have pulled 56 billion francs in the fourth quarter compared to 37 billion francs in the previous quarter. Withdrawal of funds from the financial institution became reality after the campaigns in different countries, including the United States seeking assistance from the Swiss banks to obtain data on their customers for disclosure of tax crimes. However, the management of UBS commented that the Swiss government hopes to find “alternative mechanisms” and compromise with the tax and in particular those in the U.S..

Mayor of London warned bankers for unexpected risks from Switzerland

Viliyana Filipova — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:54:59 +0000

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson warned the bankers to stay in the City of London, warning that the temptation to move to Switzerland to them face unexpected risks, officials said. “I am told that there are some parts of the canton of Bern, where men are not allowed to urinate made after 10 o’clock at night so as not to disturb their neighbors,” Johnson told a reception organized by the Japanese investment bank Nomura in the ski resort of Davos, which is currently being held traditional World Economic Forum. His comments in the room full of bankers, were made on the news that some hedge funds and investment bankers leave London and move to Switzerland to avoid the EU regulations or imposed in the UK tax revenue over a specified amount and on bonuses. “Time is the master of the universe to show that they can be both servants of society,” said Johnson, a former journalist and a frequent guest on satirical TV shows.
Moreover, Johnson has warned bankers that they have greater chances of survival in London than in New York. “Although the murders in New York are at their lowest level for all times, however, there are three times more likely to be killed in New York than in London, says London mayor.