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LSE posts profit rise; offers made for Generali assets; Pru names new risk chief

* ECB Supervisory Board Chair Danièle Nouy said the central bank will decide on a case-by-case basis whether to ask lenders that will fail the adverse scenario of its 2018 stress test to set aside more capital, Reuters reported.

* ECB officials are expected to discuss tweaking their communication stance at a March 8 meeting and will likely wait until the summer before starting to signal an end to its asset purchase program, insiders told Reuters.

UK AND IRELAND

* U.K. Financial Conduct Authority CEO Andrew Bailey encouraged the industry to look into the potential creation of a "synthetic" London Interbank Offered Rate, as some market participants have withdrawn from the lending benchmark due to the LIBOR manipulation scandal.

* The Association of British Insurers has called on the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority to enforce a "decisive policy action" after the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority called for the calculation of insurers' solvency capital requirements to be further simplified.

* U.K. lenders drew a total of £115.4 billion from the Bank of England's £140 billion Term Funding Scheme, which was launched after the Brexit vote, The Daily Telegraph reported. In the last three months of 2017, the banks borrowed £18 billion from the scheme, compared to £9.7 billion drawn down in the prior period.

* Nationwide Building Society priced a $1.75 billion, two-part offering of a new type of bail-in-able debt, according to LCD, an offering of S&P Global Market Intelligence. The tranche consists of $1 billion of 3.766%, six-year senior nonpreferred notes due March 4, 2024, and $750 million of 4.302%, 11-year senior nonpreferred notes due March 8, 2029.

* Prudential Plc named James Turner chief risk officer, effective immediately, replacing Pat Casey, who will be retiring from the company.

* London Stock Exchange Group Plc reported full-year 2017 consolidated profit attributable to equity holders of £505 million, up from a restated £152 million in 2016.

* Barclays Plc will not face criminal charges in connection with a U.S. case alleging its former head of New York foreign exchange trading operation, Robert Bogucki, of defrauding client Hewlett-Packard Co., Bloomberg News reported, noting that it signals a new approach by U.S. authorities to impose lesser penalties on companies that report securities fraud themselves.

* The U.K. High Court has appointed members of PricewaterhouseCoopers as joint administrators of Beaufort Securities Ltd. and joint special administrators of Beaufort Asset Clearing Services Ltd., following an urgent application by the FCA, which deemed both firms to be insolvent.

* British peer-to-peer lender Collateral UK entered into administration after it emerged that it was not authorized by the U.K. FCA, according to the Financial Times.

* The founders of Israel-based, London-listed Plus500 Ltd. sold an aggregate of 7,272,728 ordinary shares of the company for a price of £11 per share, raising proceeds of £80 million.

* U.S.-based Federated Investors Inc. has begun exclusive discussions with Hermes Investment Management Ltd. about acquiring a controlling stake in the British asset manager, insiders told Reuters.

GERMANY, SWITZERLAND AND AUSTRIA

* Bank J. Safra Sarasin AG Chairman Ilan Hayim indicated that the Swiss bank could easily purchase an asset manager half of its size, Bloomberg News reported. "Let's not exaggerate, but for an entity with assets under management of CHF50 billion to CHF100 billion — it's not a financial issue," Hayim said, adding that the lender is analyzing many potential deals, with the risk profile and quality of staff at potential targets being considered important factors to avoid jeopardizing existing assets.

* German lender Landesbank Baden-Württemberg reported full-year 2017 preliminary net consolidated profit of €419 million, up from €11 million in 2016, on the back of an absence of goodwill impairments for the year.

* In a letter to Commerzbank AG CEO Martin Zielke, London-based fund manager Petrus Advisers Ltd, which holds a 3% stake in the lender, blasted the high costs and general performance of online subsidiary comdirect bank AG, Handelsblatt reported. “Your Comdirect management team is boasting of successes that do not exist,” wrote Petrus partners Klaus Umek and Till Hufnagel, pointing to the bank’s share price, which they said had been 60% to 75% worse than comparable companies over the past year.

* Meanwhile, Commerzbank is pushing for regulatory relief on the use of big data analytics, with CEO Martin Zielke saying regulation should allow banks to use public data sources and incorporate them into their models, Börsen-Zeitung wrote. Zielke noted that retailers like Amazon and Zalando already use advance analytics in their business operations, while banks have lost ground during the years of increased regulation.

* Antje Leminsky yesterday officially replaced Wolfgang Grenke as chair of the board of directors of Grenke AG.

FRANCE AND BENELUX

* Former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond's Atlas Merchant Capital LLC is in discussions to acquire a stake held by BlackFin Capital Partners in brokerage Kepler Cheuvreux SA, insiders told Bloomberg News. The French private equity firm owns nearly 20% of Kepler Cheuvreux.

* Société Générale SA finalized an agreement with three unions involving job cuts of 2,135 employees by 2020, as part of the lender's plans to restructure its French retail banking network, Reuters reported. The agreement will prioritize offering positions to employees elsewhere in the company and prohibits outright layoffs.

* BNP Paribas SA made several personnel changes to its global markets business, including appointing Martin Egan vice chairman of the global markets client board and Arne Groes global head of primary and credit markets, Thomson Reuters' IFR wrote.

* Euronext NV will start publishing data on traders' positions in its commodity derivatives in the first half, to comply with the EU's revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, Reuters reported. The exchange wanted to launch the reports in the beginning of January, but delayed them due to the need to check data being submitted by market participants.

* The Dutch banking association claims banks will face huge problems in executing the fourth European anti-money laundering directive, Het Financieele Dagblad reported.

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

* Banco de Sabadell SA appointed former Banca March SA CEO José Nieto de la Cierva director of corporate and investment banking, Expansión wrote.

* Novo Banco SA sold its Venezuelan branch to Bancamiga Banco Universal CA. The value of the transaction was not disclosed, Jornal de Negócios reported.

ITALY AND GREECE

* Italian insurer Generali has received bids from Bermuda-based Athene Holding Ltd. and Cinven Ltd. unit Viridium Group GmbH & Co. KG for its €40 billion German life insurance portfolio, insiders told Bloomberg News. No final decisions have been made regarding the sale and other interested buyers could emerge, according to the sources.

* Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA is expected to cut the price for the disposal of a nonperforming loan portfolio originally set at 21% of its nominal value by a few tenths of a decimal point following due diligence on the loans, MF said. It comes as the size of the portfolio has now contracted to an estimated €24.6 billion from €26.1 billion initially.

* SPAXS, the listed investment vehicle led by veteran banker Corrado Passera that raised €600 million with investors to buy a bank, is in exclusive talks through March 9 to acquire Banca Interprovinciale SpA, Il Messaggero reported.

NORDIC COUNTRIES

* A Norwegian appeals court has exonerated Nordea Bank AB (publ) from any liability in a currency loan dispute filed by a bank customer, e24.no reported. The court ruled that Nordea provided an acceptable standard of professional investment advice to the plaintiff, the Svein Henjesand family.

* Jyske Bank A/S is divesting real estate assets as part of a broader plan to refocus on core business areas outside property management, FinansWatch wrote. The bank plans to sell a number of upmarket commercial and residential city properties in Copenhagen.

EASTERN EUROPE

* The Ukrainian central bank raised its key policy rate by 100 basis points to 17%, its fourth consecutive rate increase since October, as inflation risks remain unabated.

* The Ukrainian Security and Defense Council decided to extend sanctions imposed in March 2017 against the Ukrainian units of Russian state-owned banks, Vedomosti reported.

* Meanwhile, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned that PAO Sberbank of Russia and JSC VTB Bank will be under risk of new U.S. sanctions if they do not transfer their defense sector loans to PAO Promsvyazbank, recently picked by the Russian government to service local weapon makers, Vedomosti said.

* OTP Bank Nyrt. reported fourth-quarter 2017 IFRS net comprehensive income attributable to equity holders of 64.37 billion Hungarian forints, compared to 49.19 billion forints a year earlier. For full year 2017, the Hungarian lender reported consolidated net profit for the period attributable to owners of the company of 281.14 billion forints, compared to 202.21 billion forints in the year-ago period.

* LC Corp BV, an investment vehicle of Polish businessman Leszek Czarnecki, sold a 10% stake 10% in Getin Holding SA and a 1.72% stake in Idea Bank SA, Rzeczpospolita reported. The shares were most likely purchased by Getin Noble Bank, also controlled by Czarnecki. The businessman received the total of 147 million Polish zlotys from the two transactions and could use the funds to purchase additional shares to be issued by Getin Noble as part of its planned 190 million zloty capital hike.

* The proportion of nonperforming loans in the Croatian banking system dropped to 11.37% at the end of 2017 from 13.8% in 2016, Reuters reported, citing the Croatian central bank. The level of corporate nonperforming loans decreased to 22.3% from 28.3% during the period in question, while retail bad loans shrank to 8.1% from 10.3%.

IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD

Asia-Pacific: Indian state banks to consolidate overseas ops; CBA unit float moves forward

Middle East & Africa: Barclays Africa rebrands; Fitch lowers Bahrain; BNY Mellon eyes Riyadh office

Latin America: Credicorp appoints CFO; Banco Agropecuario restructuring; BTG eyes loan growth

North America: Wells allegedly mishandled fraud probes; BofA fires 2 in sexual misconduct probe

North America Insurance: AmTrust agrees to sale; NJ insurer reports $550M tax benefit

NOW FEATURED ON S&P GLOBAL MARKET INTELLIGENCE

Data Dispatch EMEA: Europe pushes for banking union, but big cross-border mergers remain elusive: European regulators and even some bank bosses agree that consolidation in Europe's banking sector, including across borders, is a necessity. But a number of factors, both internal and external, look set to keep holding back the tide.

AIB set to resolve tracker scandal, boosts lending in strong Irish economy: Allied Irish Banks is seeing new lending growth bolstered by improving economic growth in Ireland, according to the lender's CEO.

Russia's financial stability sound despite bank bailouts, but problems may loom: The recent recapitalization of three privately held lenders by the central bank has not undermined Russia's financial stability, but risks remain for the medium to long term, according to S&P Global Ratings.

Sheryl Obejera, Ed Meza, Meike Wijers, Gerard O'Dwyer, Beata Fojcik, Heather O'Brian, Stephanie Salti, Praxilla Trabattoni and Mariana Aldano contributed to this report.

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