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’Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Wednesday,
- Olympus director resigns, panel to examine legal steps – Reuters.
- ING to take insurance charge up to €1.1bn – statement.
- Blacks Leisure invites offers,
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Thursday,
- Greek finance minister is against holding a referendum — report and confirmation.
- BNP Paribas reports 72 per cent fall in Q3 earnings after taking bigger than expected 2bn Greek debt hit – statement.
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Thursday,
- Lloyds Banking Group announces half year loss following PPI hit; maintains guidance — statement.
- Misys says offer talks with FIS terminated — statement.
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Monday,
- Bank of Ireland welcomes €1.1bn equity injection from the private sector — statement.
- ING to sell Latin American operations for €2.6bn — statement.
Eurocrashing [updated]
Europe’s biggest fallers at pixel time (via Reuters). Notice a trend?
The Italian 10-year bond yield is above 5.5 per cent. Its Spanish peer is closing in on 6 per cent…
Updated — Spanish 10-year through 6 per cent.
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Wednesday,
- Sanofi agrees to buy Genzyme for $74 in cash per share – statement.
- Societe Generale posts full-year net income of €3.9bn – statement.
- BHP Billiton half-year Ebitda up 60 per cent to $17.3bn – statement.
Belgian banks exposed to Belgium
Belgian bonds are blowing out.
Which means pain for any (unhedged) entity holding the stuff — for instance, Belgian banks. Citigroup attempts to quantify Belgian financials’ exposure to their host country in a Wednesday research piece — though it’s worth noting that they do reckon Belgium “is in a far stronger position than the [European] peripheral countries”
Worst banking conspiracy ever
Have you ever heard of Inter-Alpha? We hadn’t until this weekend, although we tend not to frequent the conspiracy sites that lump it in alongside the world’s Bilderbergs, Rothschilds, and the Stonecutters.
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Wednesday,
- ING to spin off its two insurance businesses; announces Q3 results — statement.
- Q3 results from Unicredit fall short of expectations — statement.
- J Sainsbury says H1 pretax profits rose 8 per cent to £332m — statement.
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Wednesday,
- Rok warns on profit after ‘serious failings’ in financial controls — statement.
- Standard Life profit up 10 per cent to £182m – statement.
- ING posts second-quarter profit of €1.2bn — statement.
EMU break-up risks UK depression worse than 1930s, says ING
ING recently spelt out what a eurozone break-up would mean for the global economy — seemingly much to the delight of commentators like the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.
From the July 7 edition of the British paper:
ING’s pictorial guide to the market
Here’s fifty-nine entertaining slides from ING on the state of the global recovery:
Click on the graphic for the full tour.
ING to list insurance unit
ING, the Dutch financial services company, will work towards an IPO of its insurance business early next year although it has not ruled out finding a buyer for the assets in parts or as a whole. Under a restructuring plan imposed by the European Commission to reflect the state aid it received,
Aviva eyes ING break-up
Aviva, the UK’s second-biggest insurer, will examine the break-up of ING to see if it will yield any acquisition opportunities, according to Andrew Moss, Aviva’s CEO. The Dutch financial services group is selling its insurance and investment management business in order to win European Commission approval for the receipt of state aid.
CDS report: Credit rally loses momentum
Gavan Nolan of Markit wrote this CDS report
European credit indices widened for the third day running as the long rally showed signs that it was losing momentum. The Markit iTraxx Europe index was traded wider than 90bp,
Lloyds, RBS and state aid
The UK’s two part-nationalised banks, Lloyds Banking Group and RBS, are under pressure again on Wednesday morning as the market continues to fret about potential state aid remedies.
Since ING, the Dutch financial services group,
Brussels orders ING break-up
ING on Monday unveiled a radical break-up forced on it by the European Commission that will see the Dutch financial services group sell off its insurance and investment management business following last year’s state-bail out.
Break-ING up is so hard to do
Nips and tucks can only hide so much. News that ING will undergo major reconstructive surgery — amputating its banking arm from its insurance operations — may have been expected, but nonetheless is a major blow to bancassurance as a business model.
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Monday,
- ING says it will split in half as part of European Commission restructuring deal and launch a €7.5bn rights issue – statement, statement.
- Ladbrokes says it has received 95 per cent take up for rights issue – statement.
Overseas-Chinese eyes ING unit
Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, the owner of Singapore’s biggest life insurer, is close to an agreement to buy ING Groep’s private banking assets in Asia for about $1.5bn, trumping HSBC for the ING unit,
Burden sharing for bondholders lives!
Remember the hybrid debt, or subordinated bond, attack launched by the European Commission against certain Euro-area banks?
The Commission wanted bank bondholders to share some of the pain of government bailouts,
HSBC targets rivals’ assets in Asia
HSBC is in advanced talks to buy separate Asian assets being sold by two troubled western financial groups. The bank, which is to relocate its chief executive from London to Hong Kong, is in the lead to acquire the Asian private banking operations being divested by ING,
Julius Baer buys ING’s Swiss unit
Julius Baer on Wednesday bought the Swiss private banking operations of Dutch lender ING for SFr520m ($507m) – its first acquisition since spinning off its fund management business. The acquisition of ING Bank (Switzerland) will add SFr15bn in funds under management,
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Wednesday,
- Julius Baer to buy ING Swiss private bank – statement.
- Spain’s Banesto 9-month net down 15.3 per cent on the year – report.
- Corporate: Air France KLM,
ING may sell Swiss unit to Julius Baer
ING, the Dutch financial services company, may sell its Swiss private-banking unit to Julius Baer Group for about $500m and could announce the deal as early as Wednesday, reports Bloomberg. ING, which received $14.7bn in state aid last October,
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Friday,
- ING to sell its stake in ING Australia and ING New Zealand to ANZ for $1.6bn — Reuters.
- Credit Suisse selling $1bn Lehman claim — Bloomberg.
- Norwegian bank DnB NOR announces $2.4bn rights issue – Reuters.
ANZ to buy out ING from JV
ANZ, Australia’s fourth-biggest bank, agreed to pay ING Group €1.1bn ($1.6bn) in cash for its stake in their insurance and wealth-management venture, reports Bloomberg. ING will sell its 51% stake in ING Australia and ING New Zealand to ANZ Bank,
ING aims for €1.5bn asset disposals
ING, the Dutch financial services company, is seeking to raise at least $1.5bn with the imminent sale of its Asian and Swiss private banking operations. Potential buyers of ING’s coveted private banking operations,
Hybrid debt attack – for real, from Fitch
Woosh. That is the sound of a hybrid debt bomb being dropped on the European market, courtesy of ratings agency Fitch:
FITCH DOWNGRADES LLOYDS, RBS, ING, OTHER EU BANKS’ HYBRIDS ON INCREASED RISK OF COUPON DEFERRAL
Fitch Ratings-London-20 August 2009:
Loan loss provisions drag on ING
ING, the Dutch banking and insurance group, returned to profit in the second quarter with net profit of €71m ($100m), down from €1.9bn a year ago though well up on its Q1 €793m net loss. But the result fell short of expectations as loan loss provisions remained high.