LONDON, Sept 6 (Reuters) – U.S. bank Citigroup has
launched a commodity trade finance unit, expanding into a sector
once dominated by European lenders who have been shrinking their
activities to cope with the euro zone debt crisis.

Citigroup has hired Kris Van Broekhoven from Deutsche Bank
to lead the new unit, part of its transaction
services business, a spokesman said on Thursday.

LONDON (Reuters) – The Bank of England defended its role in the global interest rate-rigging scandal on Friday, publishing a host of emails that showed it put pressure on the body responsible for the contested Libor benchmark in 2008 and then signed off on proposed changes.

Governor Mervyn King, who in a parliamentary hearing this week came under fire over a lack of oversight of the widely used benchmark during the credit crisis, had called an initial plan by the group “wholly inadequate”.

LONDON (Reuters) – The Bank of England defended its role in the global interest rate-rigging scandal on Friday, publishing a host of emails that showed it put pressure on the body responsible for the contested Libor benchmark in 2008 and then signed off on proposed changes.

Governor Mervyn King, who in a parliamentary hearing this week came under fire over a lack of oversight of the widely used benchmark during the credit crisis, had called an initial plan by the group “wholly inadequate”.

LONDON (Reuters) – Marcus Agius, the man at the top of Barclays when its traders rigged a global benchmark interest rate, faces questions from British lawmakers on Tuesday about what he knew about a scandal that threatens a dozen more international banks.

Barclays has been fined more than $450 million for its part in manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, the interest rate that underpins financial transactions worth hundreds of trillions of dollars.

MILAN/LONDON, June 26 (Reuters) – A fund backed by Russian
billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group has bought 5 percent in
UniCredit, making it the second-largest shareholder in
Italy’s biggest bank.

The stake, bought by London-based Pamplona Capital
Management, is worth about 750 million euros ($935.33 million)
at current market prices and is one of the largest investments
by a foreign operator in a listed Italian group this year.

LONDON, June 25 (Reuters) – Swiss bank Credit Suisse
is to cut senior staff in its European investment
banking department by up to a third, three sources familiar with
the matter said, as tighter regulation and weak markets hit the
sector.

“In the European investment banking business, they are going
to get rid of 60 directors and managing directors,” one source
said on Monday.

LONDON (Reuters) – Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) named Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) banker Diego De Giorgi as a co-head of its investment bank in Europe, the latest in a flurry of changes at the top of the region’s investment banks.

De Giorgi, chief operating officer of the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs in New York, will join Bank of America in January, BAML said on Monday.

LONDON, June 25 (Reuters) – Bank of America Merrill Lynch
named Goldman Sachs banker Diego De Giorgi as a
co-head of its investment bank in Europe, the latest in a flurry
of changes at the top of the region’s investment banks.

De Giorgi, chief operating officer of the investment banking
division of Goldman Sachs in New York, will join Bank of America
in January, BAML said on Monday.

LONDON, June 19 (Reuters) – A high-profile London hedge fund
criticised CoCos as “expensive and uneconomic”, underlining the
wariness of mainstream investors about the fledgling securities
once hailed as a new recapitalisation lifeline for ailing banks.

The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI) said in a letter that
Britain’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) should tell UK bank
Lloyds to swap its more than 10 billion pounds ($15.67
billion) of CoCos into equity.

LONDON (Reuters) – AXA Private Equity has raised a larger than expected $8 billion from investors, much of which it will use to take assets off the hands of banks cutting down their exposure in the face of growing pressure from regulators.

Banks, which urgently need to fortify their capital buffers, are in a rush to offload private equity assets they spent billions on in the heady days before the financial crisis, causing a flurry in so-called secondary sales.