S&P Global Market Intelligence offers our top picks of banking news stories and more published throughout the week.
U.K. government sells RBS stake
* The U.K. government completed the placement of 925 million shares, or a 7.7% stake, in Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC for 271 pence each, for expected proceeds of about £2.51 billion. The government may off-load more shares in the lender by September and ultimately trim its stake in the group to below 50% by 2018-end, a senior source told The Times of London.
* Meanwhile, Royal Bank of Scotland Group CEO Ross McEwan said the lender is looking to repurchase some of its own shares from the U.K. government, subject to regulatory approval and provided that such a move does not put plans to resume dividend payments at risk, Reuters reported.
TSB: Under regulatory eyes
* TSB Banking Group PLC CEO Paul Pester said the bank has already spent some £70 million as a result of its IT failure since moving to a new platform in April. An investigation by the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority into the issue will involve an examination of liability by top executives at the lender through the framework of the Senior Managers Regime.
* Meanwhile, Banco de Sabadell SA-owned TSB may have violated new General Data Protection Regulations when it accidentally distributed customers' personal data in botched mails that were sent out as an apology for the bank's slow responses to complaints, City A.M. reported.
* British lawmakers have urged TSB Banking Group to consider dismissing Pester after growing frustration over his account of the bank's IT problems, The Times reported.
Deals: Agreements and murmurs
* Deutsche Bank AG Chairman Paul Achleitner has talked to the bank's biggest shareholders about a potential merger with German peer Commerzbank AG, Bloomberg News reported, citing unnamed sources. Deutsche Bank later downplayed the idea of a tie-up in the short term.
* Société Générale SA CEO Frédéric Oudéa dismissed talks of potential cross-border mergers in Europe, saying it is "not the priority" for the French lender, Reuters reported. It was reported earlier that Italian bank UniCredit SpA is looking into a potential merger with Société Générale.
* Meanwhile, Société Générale SA unit Boursorama SA agreed to sell Spanish unit Self Trade Bank S.A.U. to U.S.-based private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC and former Banco Santander SA CEO Javier Marín Romano.
* CYBG PLC sweetened 44799267 its offer for Virgin Money Holdings (UK) PLC, by proposing to acquire the latter's entire issued and to-be-issued ordinary share capital based on an exchange ratio of 1.2125 new CYBG shares for each Virgin Money share, up from a ratio of 1.1297 to 1, earlier.
* French lender Groupe BPCE and its payments arm Natixis Payments has formed a partnership with U.K.-based payments processor TransferWise that will allow customers to send money abroad at what it describes as the "real exchange rate."
* Nets A/S plans to merge with Germany-based Concardis GmbH in a deal that would create a combined payment services business with annual net revenue of €1.3 billion.
Executive moves
* Liam Coleman will step down as CEO of Co-operative Bank Plc, after serving at the bank for five years.
* Deutsche Bank AG's head of corporate finance in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Alasdair Warren, is leaving the German lender, along with the two heads of its U.S. leveraged finance business, Scott Sartorius and Christopher Blum, Bloomberg News wrote. Mark Fedorcik, co-president of corporate and investment banking, will take over additional responsibilities of the EMEA corporate finance business, while Ian Dorrington and Manfred Affenzeller will replace Sartorius and Blum.
In other news
* Dutch payment solutions provider Adyen N.V. set the price range for its IPO between €220 per share and €240 per share, representing a market value of about €6.5 billion to €7.1 billion for the company.
* Société Générale SA agreed to pay a total of $1.34 billion in criminal and regulatory penalties for bribing Libyan officials and manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
* Credit Suisse Group AG agreed to pay about $47 million to the U.S. Justice Department to end a probe into whether it hired referrals from government entities in the Asia-Pacific region between 2007 and 2013 in exchange for investment banking business and/or regulatory approvals.
* PostFinance AG is planning to cut 500 full-time jobs by 2020 due to eroding profit margins and a decline in revenues, Swissinfo.ch reported.
* UBS Group AG is laying off employees at its asset management unit with at least 100 jobs in areas such as distribution have already been cut over recent months, insiders told Bloomberg News. The staff reductions come as UBS focuses on growth in China and passive and sustainable investing.
Featured during the week on S&P Global Market Intelligence
SocGen-UniCredit deal could be first step in banking union, but savings limited: A merger between SocGen and UniCredit would be a stepping stone in integrating Europe's fragmented banking market, but the cost savings and benefits are difficult to see, analysts say.
Investor demand, regulation drives green securitization market: A European debt manager is planning to issue what has been billed as the world's first collateralized loan obligation based on climate-friendly assets, while one observer predicts "green" CLOs will "turbocharge" the sustainable finance market.
RBS opens 'new chapter' with stake sale, but further work needed, analysts say: As privatization gains traction, Royal Bank of Scotland needs to keep restructuring its technology capabilities and SME lending operations in order to fully recover, said analysts.
