About: banking Archives

Europe must deal urgently with Spain's banking problems, which hang like a dark cloud threatening global economic recovery, Sweden's Finance Minister Anders Borg said yesterday (24 April).

The European Commission yesterday (18 July) urged EU governments to make available to all consumers a basic payment account to ensure that all sections of the population can fully participate in society. But consumer groups accused the Commission of backing down on past promises to table legislation on the matter. 

A European banking group will this week test a new price benchmark to set the cost of interbank and corporate lending, challenging the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) pricing scheme and paving the way for a stronger role for continental European banks in money markets.

European Union bank watchdogs fleshed out on Friday (8 October) what amount to the world's toughest and most far-reaching curbs on bonuses, prompting a warning that financial firms are now more likely to set up shop elsewhere.

The European Commission is putting its weight today (7 October) behind a Financial Activities Tax (FAT) at EU level, saying it could bring cash-strapped governments up to 25 billion euros in revenue from the banking sector in the wake of the global financial crisis.

The European Union will make health checks of banks a regular event and the results will be published in full, the bloc's presidency said yesterday (30 September).

The European Union's banking sector remains vulnerable and is recovering from the financial crisis in a slow and uneven fashion, the European Central Bank (ECB) said yesterday (29 September).

Small businesses in Ireland fear a decision by a major UK bank to close its Irish operations will plunge them into an acute credit crisis by the end of the year.

New EU rules on bankers' bonuses miss the point, argues Luigi Zingales, professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and co-author of 'Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists'.

The EU needs a strong financial supervision system with binding powers and the most appropriate solution would be a 'twin peaks' model – with one authority to supervise the banking and insurance sectors and another for securities and consumer protection, writes French Socialist MEP Pervenche Berés in a July blog post for the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP).

The European Commission will today (12 July) propose a series of measures to protect savers from the risk of failure in a move aimed at restoring confidence in the banking system and preventing public panic during financial storms.

All European Union countries will publish the results of stress tests on their banks in the second half of July at the latest to boost investor confidence in the financial sector, EU President Herman Van Rompuy said.

The Bank of England's decision to hold interest rates at a record low of 0.5% and to press ahead with its £200 billion (€242 billion) quantitative easing scheme has been welcomed by business leaders.

European countries believe a planned US bank levy to cover the costs of the American financial bailout is flawed and discriminates against foreign banks, according to a report prepared in advance of an EU finance ministers' meeting tomorrow (16 April).

A special commission put in place in Iceland to investigate the causes of the banking collapse that hit the country one and a half years ago exposed "extreme negligence" on the part of the former conservative prime minister and the former central bank governor.

Irish authorities won provisional approval from European Union regulators on Wednesday (31 March) to provide emergency recapitalisation worth up to €10.44 billion to the Anglo Irish Bank, which has been at the heart of financial turmoil in Ireland.

Europe's competition watchdog has given its approval to an Irish scheme to help banks clear bad assets from their balance sheets as they seek a return to normal lending.

Ireland's plans to establish a new agency to buy up bad loans from Irish banks are in limbo while the EU considers whether the scheme breaks state aid rules.

If US President Barack Obama's plan to ban proprietary trading at some banks were to be applied in the European Union, it could be problematic for the bloc's universal banks, an EU document obtained by Reuters said.

According to Deutsche Bank, migration to online banking will hit 60% of the EU's population by 2020, prompting security experts to warn about data privacy issues in the face of rising organised crime on the Internet. EURACTIV spoke to online security expert Samee Zafar.

MEPs today (21 January) clashed with EU ministers, calling for a delay to the entry into force of the so-called SWIFT agreement, a EU-US deal maintaining the transfer of EU citizens' banking data to US investigators.

Britain's banks say a special tax on bankers' bonuses which is being considered by the government would be "populist" and could damage the sector and the country's position as an industry hub.

In what may be seen as the last EU power-play of its kind, European home affairs ministers yesterday (30 November) overruled the European Parliament's wishes and made an interim agreement with the USA allowing American investigators broad access to EU banking data.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cut its estimate of global banking losses in the last six months but forecast an increase in writedowns in the next year. With European banks expected to lose over €400 billion by 2010, EU finance ministers are expected to discuss the issue today (1 October).