Bao Fan, star dealmaker and the founder of the boutique investment bank China Renaissance Holdings, has been released more than two years after being detained by Chinese authorities, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. China Renaissance sent shock waves through the country’s financial sector in 2023 when it announced it was unable to contact Bao, who founded the bank in 2005 with two others and still owns nearly 49% of its issued shares. The company’s share price tanked as a result of his detention. He was one…
Tag: Banking
HSBC boss says Rachel Reeves putting up bank taxes would harm UK growth
The boss of HSBC has joined a growing chorus of bankers cautioning Rachel Reeves against increasing taxes on banks in her autumn budget, warning it risked “eroding” investment and ultimately harming UK growth. Georges Elhedery, its chief executive, said banks in the UK were already subject to the highest level of taxes on profits compared with other sectors, and paid more than in most other countries. He said placing further financial pressures on lenders could spell trouble for the UK economy. “Additional taxation on banks does run the risk of…
China bans banks from luring customers with popular Labubu dolls
Chinese authorities have banned domestic banks from luring customers with gifts including the hugely popular Labubu dolls, amid fierce competition among lenders as interest rates and profit margins decline. The Zhejiang branch of China’s financial regulator, the National Financial Regulatory Administration, has asked local banks to refrain from offering non-compliant perks to attract deposits, Bloomberg News reported. The new guidance came after Ping An Bank ran a promotion, offering Pop Mart’s Labubu dolls in several cities to new customers who deposit at least 50,000 yuan (£5,162) for three months. The…
UK banks brace for first-quarter reports after Trump tariff turmoil
UK banks’ earnings reports will be studied this week for signs of turmoil linked to Donald Trump’s tariff drama, with uncertainty over global growth likely to weigh on lenders with heavy exposure to China, including HSBC. First-quarter profits only reflect the January-to-March period that preceded the US president’s “liberation day” tariff announcements on 2 April. But investors will be concerned about any hints of caution around earnings forecasts, as well as an uptick in money put aside for defaults by tariff-hit borrowers. The issue is expected to divide UK lenders…
The Guardian view on the digital pound: an impetuous idea with a risky momentum of its own | Editorial
Two years ago, the House of Lords looked into whether the Bank of England should issue digital pounds to be held in electronic wallets. Peers were unconvinced, asking if this wasn’t “a solution in search of a problem”. Last December, MPs on the Treasury select committee said the same thing. The government’s response, however, was to tell the public to prepare for a “Britcoin” to be in use by the end of the decade. Physical money has been around for thousands of years for good reason. Cash is convenient, reliable and…
China announces 0.5% cut in banks’ minimum reserves
China’s central bank announced a surprise cut to the amount of cash that banks must hold in reserve on Wednesday, hoping to boost the lending available to households and businesses as policymakers try to steer the economy through a fragile recovery. Pan Gongsheng, the governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), said that the reserve requirement ratio would be cut by 0.5% from 5 February, the deepest cut to the rate since December 2021. The move will allow around 1tn yuan (£110.8bn) to be released in the form of…
Chinese shadow bank admits £30bn shortfall after ‘management ran wild’
One of China’s biggest financial conglomerates with links to the country’s ailing property market has admitted a shortfall of nearly £30bn as it warned investors that it is “severely insolvent”. Zhongzhi, an asset and wealth management company in China’s shadow banking sector, said its total assets amounted to 200bn yuan (£22.5bn) against obligations of up to 460bn yuan, in a letter to shareholders issued on Wednesday. In the letter, the company blamed its brewing insolvency crisis on the departure of several senior executives, which left a situation in which “internal…
Ransomware attack on China’s biggest bank disrupts US Treasury market
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s US arm was hit by a ransomware attack that disrupted trades in the US Treasury market on Thursday, the latest in a string of victims ransom-demanding hackers have claimed this year. ICBC Financial Services, the US unit of China’s largest commercial lender by assets, said it was investigating the attack that disrupted some of its systems, and making progress toward recovering from it. China’s foreign ministry said on Friday the lender was striving to minimise risk impact and losses after the attack. “ICBC…
Banks pumped more than $150bn in to companies running ‘carbon bomb’ projects in 2022
Banks pumped more than $150bn last year into companies whose giant “carbon bomb” projects could destroy the last chance of stopping the planet heating to dangerous levels, the Guardian can reveal. The carbon bombs – 425 extraction projects that can each pump more than one gigaton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – cumulatively hold enough coal, oil and gas to burn through the rapidly dwindling carbon budget four times over. Between 2016 and 2022, banks mainly in the US, China and Europe gave $1.8tn in financing to the companies…
High interest rates help double HSBC profits
HSBC will hand more than $3bn (£2.5bn) to shareholders, after higher interest rates helped to more than double quarterly profits, despite taking a financial hit on China’s property crisis. The London-headquartered bank said it was launching the share buyback, and pay a dividend worth 10 cents a share, after what its chief executive, Noel Quinn, hailed as “three consecutive quarters of strong financial performance”. The move came as HSBC revealed it had made $7.7bn in pre-tax profits between July and September. While it fell short of average analyst forecasts for…