S&P Global Market Intelligence offers our top picks of banking news stories and more published throughout the week.
Personnel decisions
* HSBC Holdings PLC is reportedly undertaking new cost-cutting measures, which could lead to up to 10,000 job cuts targeting mostly high-paid roles in addition to the 4,700 redundancies already planned. Noel Quinn, acting CEO, also plans to keep the role permanently, sources told Bloomberg News.
* Deutsche Bank AG could implement nearly half of the 18,000 job cuts under its restructuring in Germany, with its retail banking business likely to take a hit, insiders told Bloomberg. The lender was also said to be planning a new technology division to revamp its legacy IT infrastructure and reduce costs.
* Danske Bank A/S is on a hiring freeze amid higher compliance costs and a low-interest rate environment in Europe. However, a spokesman said the bank will still hire for "business-critical" positions. Finland-based OP Financial Group is also cutting 300 jobs at its corporate banking and insurance customers businesses but it will also create 185 new roles.
* Credit Suisse Group AG could hire 30 staff as it plans to re-enter the U.S. wealth management market, sources told Bloomberg. The bank is in early-stage discussions about the plan, which includes adding AUM of about $15 billion to a new base in Miami.
M&A lane
* Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd. dropped its offer to buy London Stock Exchange Group PLC, with insiders telling
* Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA received takeover offers for its nonlife insurance business in several geographies, with the bank holding negotiations to eventually establish bancassurance alliances.
* Ulster Bank Ireland DAC will sell an €800 million portfolio of nonperforming mortgages to CarVal Investors LLC, The Irish Times reported. The book comprises 2,800 owner-occupier loans with a €715 million face value.
Nordic banks up guidance
* Denmark's Spar Nord Bank A/S, Vestjysk Bank A/S and Jutlander Bank A/S raised their respective full-year profit expectations, citing strong activity in the mortgage credit area.
* Finland's Ålandsbanken Abp expects its full-year net operating profit to increase year over year, a revision from the guidance it set out in February, when it expected its results to be roughly flat.
Executives on the go
* Wouter Devriendt is resigning as Dexia SA's CEO to become head of finance and control at Italy-based UniCredit SpA in early 2020. He took the helm of the Belgian bank in May 2016.
* Regulators will likely reject Jürg Zeltner's appointment to the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank, citing possible conflict of interest, sources told the Financial Times. The regulators are not convinced that Zeltner would be independent since he is also the CEO of Luxembourg-based KBL European Private Bankers SA.
In other news
* Kazakhstan-based financial group Kaspi.kz, which controls JSC Kaspi Bank, postponed its London IPO plan, citing unfavorable market conditions. Kaspi.kz did not say when it plans to resume the planned listing.
* Financial markets are preparing for potential turmoil 10 days before the U.K. leaves the EU amid the increasing possibility of a no-deal Brexit. Sources told Reuters that companies already have contingency plans for a potential rout in stocks, bonds and the pound on Oct. 21.
* About half of the 103 banks directly supervised by the ECB would not survive six months of significant liquidity shocks, according to the regulator's 2019 stress test. Universal banks and global systemically important banks would generally be hit the hardest.
Featured during the week on S&P Global Market Intelligence
European bank job cuts near 50,000 in 2019: The lion's share of the layoffs announced by European banks so far in 2019 are at German lenders, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
For EU financial hubs, no Brexit winners as fragmentation harms all: Frankfurt, Paris, Luxembourg and Dublin have taken business from London since the Brexit vote, but market observers see no real winners from the fracturing of Europe's financial services sector.
UK P2P industry needs to clean up its act, critics say: The U.K.'s rapidly growing peer-to-peer lending sector needs to clean up its act and put an end to lax standards and risky practices, according to both the regulator and critics from within the industry.
