TOP NEWS IN BANKING & FINANCIAL SERVICES
* Mizuho Financial Group Inc. President Tatsufumi Sakai will resign to take responsibility for a series of system failures, Nikkei Asia reported. Japan's Financial Services Agency is planning to issue a business improvement order to Mizuho Financial and unit Mizuho Bank Ltd. as early as this month for transacting illegal remittances.
* The Reserve Bank of Australia's head of payments policy, Tony Richards, said the regulator has stepped up research on retail central bank digital currency, or CBDC, and is engaging with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre on potential projects. The central bank is looking to conduct experiments around retail CBDC.
➤ SoftBank-backed Paytm heats up Google Pay competition after India's biggest IPO
Paytm's parent, One97 Communications Ltd., plans to spend 43 billion Indian rupees of the sale proceeds on attracting more merchants and another 20 billion rupees on new initiatives, partnerships and acquisitions, according to an IPO prospectus.
➤ Banks reckon with potential deposit outflows as inflation heats up
Deposits have continued to grow rapidly, but a pivot by the U.S. Federal Reserve and a red-hot inflation report has the industry thinking about a reversal.
BANKING
* South Korea's Financial Services Commission said nine entities submitted bids to buy Korea Deposit Insurance Corp.'s stake in Woori Financial Group Inc., with the final bidders to be announced Nov. 22, The Korea Times reported. Korea Deposit Insurance holds a 15.13% stake in the firm.
* Payong Srivanich, chairman of the Thai Bankers' Association, said banks would focus on leveraging open banking and link their systems to support transactions involving the country's central bank digital currency in 2022 as the financial sector gradually adopts digital money, Manager Daily reported.
* Indonesia's PT Bank CIMB Niaga Tbk will hold a shareholders' extraordinary general meeting Dec. 17 to appoint management positions, including the president director role, Bisnis Indonesia reported. Meanwhile, Malaysia's CIMB Group Holdings Bhd. nominated Lani Darmawan, CIMB Niaga's consumer business director, as the new president director, The Star reported.
* India's Punjab National Bank raised 19.19 billion rupees in aggregate by issuing and allotting 7.10% unsecured nonconvertible Basel III-compliant Tier 2 bonds.
FINANCIAL SERVICES
* China's Ministry of Finance plans to transfer part of its holdings in troubled China Huarong Asset Management Co. Ltd. to CITIC Group Corp. in the next few years, which could make the financial services firm Huarong's largest shareholder, Caixin reported, citing sources with knowledge of the issue.
* Yuzo Kano, CEO of Japanese cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer Inc., is considering acquiring a small domestic or foreign exchange to scale up its business, Bloomberg News reported. BitFlyer has applied for a license in Singapore to access clients in the city-state, including hedge funds.
* The board of Philippines-based Premiere Horizon Alliance Corp. approved the acquisition of a 33% stake in financial technology firm SquidPay Technology Inc. for 561 million pesos. Premiere Horizon Alliance will also be entitled to three out of the seven seats on SquidPay's board.
* Indian financial technology platform Avail Finance is acquiring neobank YeLo — though a deal has not been formalized yet — and is seeking regulatory approval to acquire nonbank lender Art Climate Finance (India) Pvt. Ltd., Mint reported, citing a person familiar with the development.
* Airwallex Pty. Ltd. raised an additional US$100 million in a series E1 financing round lead by Lone Pine Capital, taking its total series E fundraising to US$300 million, with US$802 million raised in total.
POLICY AND REGULATION
* China's Ministry of Finance issued 6 billion yuan of treasury bonds to institutional investors, completing its task of issuing 20 billion yuan of treasury bonds in Hong Kong in 2021. The treasury bonds include 3 billion yuan of two-year term bonds, 2 billion yuan of five-year term bonds and 1 billion yuan of 10-year term bonds.
South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service will hold an emergency meeting this week with officials from eight major banks to look into the banks' systems to determine interest rates on lending and their operation status, Yonhap News Agency reported.
* The Philippines' Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas decided to maintain the interest rate on its overnight reverse repurchase facility at 2% as it observed economic growth to be gaining solid traction. It also kept the overnight deposit and lending facilities at 1.5% and 2.5%, respectively.
* Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Benjamin Diokno said a new set of rules streamlining the requirements of various regulatory agencies for bank mergers, consolidation and acquisitions would be released in two months, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported. Meanwhile, BusinessWorld quoted Diokno saying the central bank is reviewing four mergers, two consolidations and one acquisition in the banking sector.
* Bank Indonesia held the BI 7-Day reverse repo rate at 3.50%, the deposit facility rate at 2.75% and the lending facility rate at 4.25%. The regulator said it would coordinate policy with the government to maintain financial system stability and revive bank lending.
* Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on all democratic nations to work together to regulate cryptocurrencies, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, India plans to tighten regulation of cryptocurrencies by allowing only those that have been preapproved by the government to be listed and traded on exchanges, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.
* The Reserve Bank of India's working group on digital lending recommended separate legislation for the sector to prevent illegal digital lending activities, the development of certain baseline technology standards as well as the collection of borrowers' data with their prior and explicit consent, with the data to be stored in servers in India, among other things.
* Bangladesh Bank asked Sonali Bank Ltd. to explain why its investment in the capital market rose above 26%, crossing the permissible limit of 25% of its total capital, The Financial Express reported.
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R Sio, Eden Estopace, Sally Wang, Sarun Saelee, Cathy Hwang, Emi White and Aditya Suharmoko contributed to this report.
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