JPMorgan Chase & Co. HSBC,  and UBS Group AG are among five banks being sued over allegations of foreign-exchange rigging in a class-action lawsuit seeking more than £1bn ($1.2bn or just over R17bn), Bloomberg reported yesterday. Barclays, Citigroup and Royal Bank of Scotland Group are also among the targets of the United Kingdom suit that will say pension funds, asset managers, hedge funds and corporations lost out because of market manipulation between 2007 and 2013 and should be compensated. The lawsuit centers on collusion on foreign-exchange trading strategies, for which the…

  Tracka, the  organisation  founded by BudgIT for  tracking the implementation of government projects in communities,  has raised alarm over what it describes as,  “wasteful empowerment projects” in the 2019 Zonal Intervention Projects, nominated by members of the National Assembly.   In a press release, the organsisation  noted that the Zonal Intervention Projects accounted for N58 billion of the N100 billion constituency projects, which, it said,  “are practically used as political benefits.”   According to the organisation, “the lack of citizen inclusion in the nomination of zonal intervention projects has led to an escalating number of abandoned projects…

Two banks, Heritage Bank Plc and African Export Import Bank  (Afreximbank), have signed $1billion Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Zamfara State Government  in the areas of mining, agriculture and water resources.  In addition to Heritage Bank, which is  the banker to the project, another financial institution involved in the transaction is PAC Capital Limited, the investment banking arm of PanAfrican Capital Holdings. Speaking with journalists at the signing of the MoU in Abuja, the MD/CEO of Heritage Bank, Ifie Sekibo, stated that the win-win collaboration amongst the institutions would promote and fast track support that…

The Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) commitment towards achieving 95 per cent  financial inclusion rate by 2024 would be enhanced if the apex bank licenses mobile network operators (telcos), as Payment Service Banks (PSBs), Chief Executive Officer, Financial Derivatives Company Limited’s (FDC), Mr. Bismarck Rewane, has said. According to the financial expert, telco PSBs have some key advantages over deposit money banks, which will make them more effective agents in promoting financial inclusion in the country. Rewane, who stated this in the FDC’ s latest Monthly Economic Update, obtained by New Telegraph…

  There are indications that deposit money banks in the country may find it difficult maintaining current levels of profitability due to new measures introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which aim to compel lenders to increase lending to the real sector by restricting their investment in government securities.   As part of such measures, the CBN had barred DMBs from buying Treasury bills for their own accounts at an open market auction held on July 18. According to traders, the apex bank told lenders that their bids…