banks | Common News Update

Apr82021 by adminNo Comments

Prince William: Banks must do more to protect environment

Business

EPAThe Duke of Cambridge has urged banks to "invest in nature" to help fight global climate change. Speaking at an IMF and World Bank meeting, Prince William said protecting nature continued to play only a small part in combating global warming. He said investing in reforestation and sustainable agriculture were "cost effective" ways of tackling the issue. Banks have come under increasing pressure to step up efforts to help fight climate change.Just this week, Barclays' London headquarters was the target of a protest staged by climate activist group Extinction Rebellion. Members held placards and broke several windows as they called on the bank to stop financing fossil fuel companies.Addressing central bankers and finance ministers at the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund ...

Apr42021 by adminNo Comments

Banks sanctions Rs 25,586 cr to 1.14 lakh Stand-Up India accounts in 5 years

Finance

The Finance Ministry on Sunday said banks have sanctioned Rs 25,586 crore to about 1,14,322 beneficiaries under the Stand Up India Scheme in the last five years for promoting entrepreneurship among women and SC & STs. The objective of Stand-Up India is to promote entrepreneurship amongst women, Scheduled Castes (SC) & Scheduled Tribes (ST) categories, to help them in starting a greenfield enterprise in trading, manufacturing and services sector, by both ready and trainee borrowers, the Finance Ministry said in a statement. Under the scheme, bank loans between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore are provided to at least one Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribe borrower and at least one woman borrower per bank branch of Scheduled Commercial Banks. Started in April 5, 2016, the scheme has benefit...

Apr32021 by adminNo Comments

Covid-19 surge derails banks’ plans to get back to HQs

Finance

(This story originally appeared in on Apr 03, 2021)MUMBAI: Bank corporate offices are getting back to a work-from-home mode (WFH) with a skeletal staff attending office, given the resurgence of Covid in Mumbai where most of them are headquartered. Public sector banks, private sector banks and even the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are moving back to last year’s system of working when Covid cases were first on the rise. Bankers said that there was a feeling of deja vu because of the increasing coronavirus numbers. The return to WFH comes at a time when banks were seeing more employees attend office following the roster system from February this year. The return to work had resulted in larger crowds in business districts. However, recently banks recorded multiple cases among staff members, f...

Mar252021 by adminNo Comments

Banks stocks rise after hours as Fed sets date to lift buyback, dividend restrictions

Finance

In this articleJPMCWFCKBEGSFederal Reserve Jerome Powell testifies during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on "The Quarterly CARES Act Report to Congress" on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 1, 2020.Susan Walsh | ReutersBank stocks rose in extended trading on Thursday after the Federal Reserve announced its plan for lifting restrictions on dividends and buybacks from financial companies.Shares of JPMorgan Chase rose 1%, while those for Citigroup and Wells Fargo each added 0.7%. Goldman Sachs climbed 0.5%.The Fed said it would keep its pandemic-era restrictions on banks in place until June 30. The Fed had previously said that banks could restart their buybacks and dividend hikes in the first quarter, so Thursday's announcement is a delay but does provide more clarity for investo...

Feb282021 by adminNo Comments

View: How the government can truly make India’s state-run banks efficient just like their private sector peers

Finance

Budget 2021 has finally made long-awaited policy pronouncements of a reformist nature in the banking and financial sector. Governments are prone to make announcements that catch headlines, but soon fade away with only half-hearted implementation. One says this with the hindsight of the declaration of divestment of the Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) in 2015 and later of Air India. But genuine enthusiasm arises from the fact that after declaring that GoI would privatise public sector banks (PSBs), set up an asset reconstruction company (ARC) and establish a development finance institution (DFI) among others, the administration has started to take steps to implement these. It is encouraging that the finance ministry has already sought timelines from ministries on getting the deci...