Banking | - Part 7

Zimbabwe Bank Suspends Use of Visa Cards as Cash Crunch Worsens

HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) – CBZ Holdings Ltd., Zimbabwe’s largest bank, suspended the use of Visa Inc. cards for local transactions as the country struggles to cope with a cash shortage. Charges on making transactions are very expensive for customers, CBZ Chief Executive Officer Never Nyemudzo said by phone from Harare, the capital, on Friday. Money also has to be settled outside the country for accounts that are held overseas in foreign currency, he said. The…

South African Bank Stocks Beating Rivals May Find 2017 Tougher

Posted on by The Editorial Team

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa was a bright spot for banks on the continent in 2016, with stocks shrugging off the nation’s economic woes to head for the third-best performance in the past decade. Next year the picture may not be as rosy. The nation’s banks index rose 25 percent this year as rate increases boosted lending income, commodities rose and the rand rebounded. In Nigeria, 15 banks fell 33 percent on average and 11…

Banking Stocks Surprise Wrongfoots South African Money Managers

Posted on by The Editorial Team

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Over-defensive South African money managers who have missed their performance benchmarks this year would be better positioned had they read signals that banking stocks were showing greater resilience than expected, according to Richard Schellbach, the equity strategist at Citigroup Inc. This time last year, the outlook for South Africa was starkly different, with the threat of economic recession looming, Schellbach said in an interview in Johannesburg. “But at the end of the…

South Africa leaves key rate steady, warns of risks to inflation

Posted on by The Editorial Team

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa’s central bank kept its benchmark repo rate unchanged at 7 percent on Thursday in line with market consensus, but warned that risks to the inflationary outlook had increased. Delivering the last scheduled rate decision for the year, the central bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago said food price inflation was expected to moderate at a slower pace than what the bank had previously forecast. The bank has kept the benchmark…

Regulation | The Fundamental Review of the Trading Book

Posted on by The Editorial Team

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – The very aptly named Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) is set to go live in 2019 according to the final standards (1) published by Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) in January this year. The paper calls for the rules to be incorporated into national legislations by January 2019 with banks expected to use FRTB for calculating reported regulatory capital by January 2020. Whilst its main objective…

Barclays sells Egyptian Business to Morocco’s Attijariwafa Bank

Posted on by The Editorial Team

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Britain’s Barclays has completed the sale of its Egyptian business to Morocco’s Attijariwafa Bank as part of its shift towards focussing on the United States and Britain. The sale will mean a cut of about 2 billion pounds in Barclays’ risk-weighted assets, it said on Tuesday, boosting the bank’s core capital ratio by about 0.1 percent. Barclays did not give a price for the transaction, although sources previously told Reuters…

Implementing an IFRS 9 Solution: Challenges Faced by Financial Institutions

Posted on by The Editorial Team

Background IFRS 9 is a new international standard set forth to address the weaknesses of IAS 39. This article provides an overview of the new standard and analyzes the major challenges financial institutions will face in ensuring compliance. While there is still uncertainty in terms of implementation approaches, we believe IFRS 9 adoption will lead to a more efficient and lower-risk financial system. As part of the response to the last financial crisis, the International…

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