Headlines

European antitrust regulators on Tuesday accused JPMorgan Chase, HSBC and Crédit Agricole of having colluded to fix benchmark interest rates tied to the euro, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Competition authorities at the European Commission said they had issued a so-called statement of objections – a formal step in antitrust investigations – to the three banks. The officials said their preliminary view was that the banks had colluded to influence the pricing of interest rate derivatives tied to the Euro Interbank Offered Rate, or Euribor.

Prime Minister David Cameron has said the government will consider scaling back its Help to Buy mortgage support scheme if the Bank of England believes it is inflating a housing bubble, as official data showed an annual house price rise of 17 per cent in London, the Financial Times reported. Mr Cameron told the BBC he agreed with Mark Carney, BoE governor, when he said last weekend that the sharp rise in house prices posed “the biggest risk” to the UK’s economic recovery.

Four Romanian judges are currently investigated for having asked for and received money in several insolvency cases, Romania-Insider.com reported. Prosecutors started the investigation against Ion Stanciu, Elena Rovenţa, Ciprian Sorin Viziru and Mircea Moldovan, all judges of the Bucharest court. They allegedly delayed some insolvency cases, or named certain judicial administrators to favor third parties, as well as disclosed information about the insolvency cases they handled.

The Barbados High Court has been asked to help settle an international legal battle over $5.2 million believed to be in a local commercial bank account. According to Daily Nation investigations, for the last few months Canadian real estate and investment company Homburg Invest Inc. (HII), represented by Barbadian law firm Elliott D. Mottley & Co., has been engaged in court action here after tracking what it called “diverted funds” that originated in Colorado, United States, were transferred to Nova Scotia, Canada, and ended up in Bridgetown, Barbados.

Credit Suisse has done what no other huge bank has done in over two decades: plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. In a sign that global banking giants are no longer immune from criminal charges — despite public concerns that financial institutions have grown so large and interconnected that they are “too big to jail” — federal prosecutors demanded that Credit Suisse’s parent company plead guilty to helping thousands of American account holders hide their wealth and evade taxes.

Bad loans held by Spanish banks fell for the second month in a row in March, indicating that a budding economic recovery is finally starting to benefit the country's lending institutions, The Wall Street Journal reported. Data released Monday by the Bank of Spain showed that nonperforming loans stood at €192.77 billion euros ($263.98 billion), down from €195.24 billion in February. In total, 13.38% of lenders' outstanding debts were classified as nonperforming at the end of the month.

Shares in Malaysian Airlines fell sharply for a second day to hit a record low on Monday, raising pressure on the state-run carrier to come up with a plan to restore investor confidence after missing flight MH370 and widening losses, Reuters reported. Malaysian Airline System Bhd (MAS) last week reported its worst quarterly loss in over two years. Investors were also spooked after the Wall Street Journal on Friday quoted Prime Minister Najib Razak as saying the government could not rule out bankruptcy for the airline.

A new standards body for British bankers will be launched this year, with a chairman appointed by an independent panel led by Bank of England governor Mark Carney, the Irish Times reported. Richard Lambert, a former director general of the Confederation of British Industry, who was tasked with setting the body up, said the Banking Standards Review Council (BSRC) would be a champion for better banking standards in the UK.

Mario Draghi has left little room for doubt. Ninety percent of economists in the Bloomberg Monthly Survey predict the European Central Bank president will ease monetary policy in June after saying on May 8 that officials are “comfortable” with acting then. While that allows investors to prepare for added stimulus and a weaker euro, it also sets them up for a bigger disappointment should he fail to deliver.

The regulator overseeing the Vatican's troublesome financial institutions said on Monday there has been considerable improvement in transparency and the prevention of money laundering, but that more progress was needed, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Holy See, pushed by Pope Francis and his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, has introduced rules to meet international standards and end practices at its financial institutions, including the Vatican bank, that people both within and outside the church bureaucracy have described as opaque.