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Greece's Piraeus, German bank fined; top Deutsche investor looking for new chair

* There are no conclusive signs that a recovery in eurozone economic growth is imminent amid continued risks from global trade uncertainty, outgoing ECB President Mario Draghi said as he defended a package of stimulus measures unveiled earlier this month.

* The European Banking Authority launched its 2019 EU-wide transparency exercise and expects to publish the results of the exercise alongside its annual risk assessment report in November. The exercise is exclusively based on supervisory reporting data, and will involve the release of up to 2.2 million data points on about 130 EU banks.

* Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd., in its pursuit to take over London Stock Exchange Group PLC, mandated UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG to arrange meetings with LSE shareholders to convince them of the advantages of its offer, Handelsblatt wrote.

* A tie-up of the world's largest pension funds and insurers called Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, which is responsible for roughly $2.4 trillion in investments, committed itself to carbon-neutral investment portfolios by 2050. Allianz Group, Swiss Re AG and Zurich Insurance Group AG are among the founding members. According to Allianz board member Günther Thallinger, Allianz alone will make carbon-neutral investments worth $800 billion by then, Handelsblatt wrote.

UK AND IRELAND

* U.K.-based Metro Bank PLC said it will not proceed with the issuance of a £250 million debt to meet the minimum requirement for own funds and eligible liability due to current market conditions, Reuters reported.

* A culture survey showed that about one in 12 employees in insurance market Lloyd's of London witnessed sexual harassment over the past year, Reuters reported. The survey had 6,000 responses.

GERMANY, SWITZERLAND AND AUSTRIA

* Germany's financial supervisory authority and central bank warned domestic small and medium-sized banks and savings banks that the prospect of sustained historically low interest rates makes a further decline in their profitability "very likely" and that they will have to adjust to it.

* Deutsche Bank AG's biggest shareholder, the Qatari royal family, has taken the task of finding candidates to replace the German lender's chairman, Paul Achleitner, into their own hands after numerous failed attempts to restructure the bank has hurt investor confidence, Bloomberg reported. Representatives of the Qatari royal family held talks with an international recruiting firm as they work on a list of potential candidates and are deliberating whether to force Achleitner to step down before his term ends in 2022.

* German financial regulator Bafin imposed a €1.52 million fine on payment processing firm Wirecard AG for violations of the German Securities Trading Act, owing to various shortcomings in the company's first-half report, Handelsblatt reported.

* Swiss prosecutors have opened a criminal inquiry after Credit Suisse Group AG allegedly hired private detectives to tail its former wealth management boss Iqbal Khan, who is set to join rival UBS Group AG and claims to have been threatened, the Zurich attorney's office said. The banks said media reports on the matter were "sensation-driven" and "inaccurate descriptions," Tages-Anzeiger cited a report by newswire AWP. The bank also said its board of directors will launch an inquiry into the matter.

* UBS Group and Banco do Brasil SA signed a memorandum of understanding for a partnership in providing investment banking services in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.

FRANCE AND BENELUX

* Dutch insurer Aegon NV will focus more on Asia and Southeast Europe from January 2020, Het Financieele Dagblad reported. A new unit will be led by Marco Keim, who now manages Aegon on the European mainland. Maarten Edixhoven, currently CEO of Aegon Netherlands, will join the group's management.

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

* Politicians from Spain's center-right Ciudadanos party are requesting that the country's caretaker government take action to protect banks against a potential European Court of Justice ruling that could cost the sector €25 billion, Europa Press reported. It came after the ECJ's Advocate General concluded earlier this month that a controversial mortgage index could be considered abusive.

* Spain's Supreme Court has agreed to extend by another week until Oct. 3 if necessary a trial on the ill-fated IPO of Bankia SA to complete the hearings of the remaining defendants, Expansión reported. The trial on Bankia's 2011 public listing, which resulted in more than 300,000 retail shareholders losing their life savings after the entity had to be bailed out by the Spanish government, was originally due to end last Wednesday.

* Spanish Supreme Court Judge José Luis Calama has summoned to court more defendants over an ongoing investigation into alleged irregularities that led to the 2017 bankruptcy of Banco Popular Español SA, Europa Press wrote. Among those summoned are two former CEOs of the entity, a consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers and the auditing entity itself.

* The EU systemic risk committee said measures adopted by Portugal's central bank to limit housing loans are enough to cut down the risk of a real estate bubble in the country, Economia Online said. The department noted that the "credit blockage" is the adequate way to address the current vulnerabilities.

ITALY AND GREECE

* The ECB imposed a fine of €5.15 million on Greece-based Piraeus Bank SA for breach of own funds provisions on an individual and on a consolidated basis during six consecutive quarterly reporting periods between 2015 and 2017. The bank said it will not further impact its financials as the issue and the penalty has already been reflected in the past financial statements.

* Italy's fiscal deficit is expected to be below the limit set by the EU under the 2020 budget framework being drafted by the country's new government, which seeks to avoid renewed clashes with Brussels over public finances, Bloomberg News reported.

* Banca Carige SpA's planned €700 million capital increase and €200 million bond conversion is expected to be carried out by December following shareholders' approval last Friday, MF said. The mandate of three extraordinary commissioners set to expire at the end of the month is expected to be extended to allow them to carry through with implementation of the rescue package, with a new board to be elected in the spring of 2020.

* Italy's Treasury has begun studying how to exit its 68.2% stake in Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, with a merger with another bank or an asset sale among possible options, said Il Messaggero, noting that the Italian Treasury faces a Dec. 31 deadline for presenting to the European Commission its intended strategy to exit the bank's capital by 2021.

NORDIC COUNTRIES

* A Danish court imposed a fine of 110 million Danish kroner on Germany-based North Channel Bk GmbH & Co. KG for its alleged role in a dividend stripping scheme. The bank said it has reached an agreement with all creditors involved in the proceedings, which will allow it to continue its business operations and ultimately also be sold to new owners.

* Swedish private equity firm EQT Partners AB set the price range of its IPO at between 62 Swedish kronor and 68 kronor per share, or 11.8 billion kronor to 13.0 billion kronor in the aggregate. Reuters earlier reported that the firm closed the order book on its IPO valued at as much as €1.2 billion.

EASTERN EUROPE

* The co-founders of Qiwi, which provides payment services in Russia, are looking to sell their controlling stake in the company, Kommersant reported.

* Polish banks could face costs equivalent to around 1.5x the banking sector's 2018 profit if the upcoming European Court of Justice ruling on foreign currency-indexed mortgage loans is unfavorable for them, news agency PAP reported, citing a report by Moody's. The rating agency's estimations are significantly lower than those of the Polish Bank Association, which believes the costs for lenders would amount to at least 60 billion zlotys. The aggregated net profit of the Polish banking sector reached 13 billion zlotys in 2018, the newswire noted.

* Poland's Financial Stability Committee believes the difficult situation of several financial institutions and the possibility of spreading their problems to other banks constitute the main risk for the Polish banking sector, PAP said. The exposure of local lenders to foreign currency mortgage loans also remains and important source of risk, but the potential impact of this risk could be extended, the committee was cited as saying.

* A potential new investor in Polish lender mBank would have to guarantee its long-term, stable and prudent management and have appropriate experience in banking operations, news agency PAP wrote, citing the Polish Financial Supervision Authority's head Jacek Jastrzębski.

IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD

Asia-Pacific: Chinese bank gets Hong Kong IPO approval; Japan mulls further easing in October

Middle East & Africa: Tanzania fines 5 banks for anti-money laundering breach; Kenya holds rate

Latin America: Banco do Brasil share offering expected in October; SoftBank in Brazil

North America: Citi only big US bank to commit to UN climate principles; IEX exits listings biz

Global Insurance: Dual storms; OneConnect IPO; PG&E insurance deal; Travelers portfolio transfer

NOW FEATURED ON S&P GLOBAL MARKET INTELLIGENCE

Green shoots in the Greek banking sector as toxic loans fall, deposit base grows: Greece's "big four" banks made solid progress in the second quarter on two problem areas that have loomed large since the 2009 global financial crisis: high levels of nonperforming loans and a weak deposit base.

GSIBs hike bail-in buffers but resolution of 'too big to fail' remains uncertain: Global-systemically important banks have responded promptly to the new loss-absorbing capacity requirements, in effect from Jan. 1, raising their bail-in-able asset reserves — but analysts still see high execution barriers to resolution.

Smaller UAE lenders feel M&A pinch, future deals will be more expansive: Small and midsize lenders face a struggle to remain competitive against new combinations, but any new M&A will likely result from economic factors and could result in cross-emirate or even cross-country tie-ups, according to analysts.

Digitization must not leave bank staff behind, says Lloyds' CEO Horta-Osório: Employees need to feel "invested-in," CEO António Horta-Osório said at the Sibos conference in London. Lloyds increased training spending by 50% per employee between 2018 and 2020 alongside its push for digitization.

Sheryl Obejera, Arno Maierbrugger, Meike Wijers, Gerard O'Dwyer, Beata Fojcik, Heather O'Brian, Stephanie Salti, Sophie Davies and Mariana Aldano contributed to this report.

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This S&P Global Market Intelligence news article may contain information about credit ratings issued by S&P Global Ratings. Descriptions in this news article were not prepared by S&P Global Ratings.