Deutsche Bank to cut 18,000 jobs

Deutsche Bank has announced it is closing its equities business and cutting about 18,000 jobs — equivalent to one fifth of its global workforce — after years of decline. The move ends a trading push that lasted for three decades and "ultimately only led to losses," according to Bloomberg. The German lender has been rocked by investigations and fines stemming from the financial crisis, as well as broader challenges facing European investment banks as they grapple with ultra-low interest rates and stronger rivals

Deutsche Bank (XETRA: DBKGn.DB / NYSE: DB) is radically transforming its business model to become more profitable, improve shareholder returns and drive long-term growth. To execute its transformation, the bank will significantly downsize its investment bank and aims to cut total costs by a quarter by 2022.

The highlights of the new strategy are:

• Creating a fourth business division called the Corporate Bank which will be comprised of the Global Transaction Bank and the German commercial banking business.
• Exiting the Equities Sales & Trading business and reducing the amount of capital used by the Fixed-Income Sales & Trading business, in particular Rates.
• Returning 5 billion euros of capital to shareholders starting in 2022, facilitated by a new Capital Release Unit (CRU) to which the bank plans initially to transfer approximately 288 billion euros, or about 20% of Deutsche Bank’s leverage exposure, and 74 billion euros of risk weighted assets (RWA) for wind-down or disposal(1).
• Funding the transformation through existing resources including maintaining a minimum Common Equity Tier 1 ratio of 12.5%. The bank expects to execute its restructuring without the need to raise additional capital.
• As a result, the bank’s leverage ratio is expected increase to 4.5% in 2020 and approximately 5% from 2022.
• Reducing adjusted costs(2) by 2022 by approximately 6 billion euros to 17 billion euros, a reduction by a quarter of the current cost base.
• Targeting a Return on Tangible Equity of 8% by 2022.
• Investing 13 billion euros in technology by 2022, to drive efficiency and further improve products and services.

AS PER RTI DATA Top 30 Defaulters Account for One-Third of Gross NPAs, In the banking Industry

India’s top 30 defaulters account for a third of the gross non-performing assets (NPAs) in the banking sector, according to data obtained from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) through a right to information (RTI) request.

As of March 31, India’s scheduled commercial banks had gross NPAs worth Rs 9.49 lakh crore.

According to data furnished by the RBI in response to an RTI filed by The Wire, the top 30 NPA borrowers account for Rs 2.86 lakh crore.

The central bank has, however, refused to divulge information on who these 30 accounts belong to, saying “the account-wise information is not available with us.”

The RBI’s refusal may run against the grain of a Supreme Court order earlier this year that demanded that the banking regulator be more forthcoming in disclosing the details of defaulters, among other issues.

Setting aside the legal issue though, the RBI’s reasons for not disclosing the identity of the top 30 NPA borrowers raise their own set of questions.

For example, if the banking regulator does not have account-wise information as it says, how then was it able to know which borrowers constituted the top 30 NPA accounts and provide the aggregate amount owed by these accounts?

The Wire had also asked the RBI for details of the top 30 wilful defaulters. That too was not provided, with the central bank saying, “The list of suit filed wilful defaulters 25 lakh and above is available in the public domain on the websites of Credit Information Companies.”

Reply Document by The Wire on Scribd

On April 26, the Supreme Court had directed the RBI to disclose annual inspection reports of banks and the list of wilful defaulters under the RTI Act. The SC had held that the RBI’s non-disclosure policy was in violation of a 2015 judgement of the court. The SC had also said that this was the RBI’s ‘last chance’ to comply and if the information continues to be denied, it could invite contempt of court proceedings.

RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agarwal is one of the petitioners in the matter in which the SC had issued the order. According to him, the RBI has ‘evaded responsibility’ by denying the information under the RTI Act.

“It is an eyewash and the RBI is evading responsibility. The RBI being the regulatory authority should have provided the required information by procuring it from the concerned body under provision of Sec 2(F) of The RTI Act. Moreover, such information in the larger public interest should be available with the RBI without even seeking it under the RTI Act,” Agarwal said.

Top 30 NPA accounts owe more than total debt of entire industries

As of February 28, the RBI revealed in its RTI response, the top 30 NPA accounts owe Rs 2,86,325 crore.

While not strictly comparable, these NPA figures are 50% higher than the total farm loan waivers announced by states since April 2017, which amount to Rs 1.9 lakh crore.

The gross NPAs of these 30 accounts are also more than the total credit disbursed to the industries of wholesale trade, retail trade, commercial real estate, shipping, transport and industries described by the RBI as ‘medium industries’.

On average, each borrower owes Rs 9,544 crore. To put this in perspective, Kingfisher Airlines owes banks a total of around Rs 9,000 crores. The total amount owed by Jet Airways to banks is Rs 8,700 crores.

However, this could be akin to comparing apples and oranges as the size of companies among the top 30 NPA accounts are likely much larger than Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways. But this is unclear due to the RBI’s refusal to disclose account-wise data.

Earlier this month, Dheeraj Mishra of The Wire reported that 47% – or Rs 4.5 lakh crore – of gross NPAs are owed by the top 100 accounts. The RBI refused to provide details of the individual accounts to Mishra as well.

Now, with the new information provided by the RBI on top 30 NPA accounts, it becomes clear that NPAs are concentrated even more heavily, with 63% of the gross NPAs of the top 100 accounts being accounted for by the top 30 accounts.

10% of total debt went to 30 accounts

The RBI also disclosed that the total loans given to top 30 borrowers (who may be different from the top 30 NPA accounts) totalled Rs 8.42 lakh crore. The gross bank credit (the total amount of loans disbursed by the banking system) amounted to Rs 85.16 lakh crore. So, 10% of the total loans disbursed in the country, were disbursed to 30 accounts.

The total amount of loans to the top 30 accounts is 76% of the Rs 11.07 lakh crore credit to the agriculture sector. The total amount disbursed in the economy as housing loans is about half of the amount disbursed to these 30 accounts.

PNB reports another fraud over Rs 3,800 crore by Bhushan Power and Steel

Public sector lender Punjab National Bank said Saturday it has detected a fraud of more than Rs 3,800 crore by Bhushan Power & Steel Ltd (BPSL) and has reported it to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

PNB said Bhushan Power & Steel Ltd misappropriated bank funds and manipulated its books of accounts to raise funds from consortium lender banks.

"On the basis of forensic audit investigation findings and CBI filing FIR, on suo moto basis, against the company and its directors, alleging diversion of funds from banking system, a fraud of Rs 3,805.15 crore is being reported by bank to RBI," Punjab National Bank (PNB) said in a regulatory filing.

"It has been observed that the company has misappropriated bank funds, manipulated books of accounts to raise funds from consortium lender banks. At present, the case is at NCLT which is in advance stage and the Bank expects good recovery in the account," PNB added.

PNB said the bank has already made provisions amounting to Rs 1,932.47 crore, as per prescribed prudential norms, for the BPSL account.

PNB said its domestic exposure to Bhushan Power & Steel Ltd (BPSL) stood at Rs 3,191.51 crore and overseas exposure of USD 49.71 million (approx Rs 345.74 crore) at Dubai branch and USD 38.51 million (approx.Rs.267.90 crore) at Hong Kong branch.

The state-run bank has reported a new fraud at a time when it is recovering from a major financial embezzlement of around USD 2 billion (around Rs 13,000 crore) by diamond merchant Nirav Modi that was reported in February 2018.

Modi allegedly acquired fraudulent letters of undertaking (LoUs) from one PNB's branches for overseas credit from other Indian lenders, and is being probed by CBI and Enforcement Directorate among other agencies.

Public sector banks requires freedom from the government, otherwise they might not perform better---- Raghuram Rajan

Public sector banks might perform better if they are freed from some of the constraints they operate under but such freedom typically requires distance from the government, says former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan.

He is also of the view that there is no guarantee that privatisation will be a panacea. Much of the discussion on privatisation, he says, seems to make assumptions based on ideological positions.

“Certainly, if public sector banks are freed from some of the constraints they operate under (such as paying above the private sector for low-skilled jobs and paying below the private sector for senior management positions, having to respond to government diktats on strategy or mandates, or operating under the threat of CVC/CBI scrutiny) they might perform far better,” he says.

Distance from government

However, Rajan feels that such freedom typically requires distance from the government. “So long as they are majority-owned by the government, they may not get that distance.” Some private banks, according to him, have been poorly governed.

“Instead, we need to recognise that ownership is just one contributor to governance and look at pragmatic ways to improve governance across the board. There certainly is a case to experiment by privatising one or two mid-sized public sector banks and reducing the government stake below 50 per cent for a couple of others, while working on governance reforms for the rest,” Rajan says.

In this case, “rather than continuing a never-ending theoretical debate, we will then actually have some evidence to go on. Some political compromises will be needed to allow the process to go through, but so long as the newly privatised banks are not totally hamstrung in their operational flexibility as a result of these compromises, this will be an experiment worth undertaking”, he argues.

Loan waivers

Rajan has put forth these views in a book titled “What the Economy Needs Now” which he has edited along with fellow economists Abhijit Banerjee, Gita Gopinath and Mihir S Sharma. Agriculture, according to Rajan, needs serious attention but not through loan waivers as such measures only vitiate the credit culture. He lists lending targets and compulsory loan waivers among the more dangerous mandates.

“Uncompensated government mandates have been imposed on public sector banks for a long time. This is lazy government - if an action is worth doing it, it should be paid for out of budgetary resources. Mandates also are against the interests of minority shareholders in public sector banks,” he writes in the book, published by Juggernaut.

NPAs

According to Rajan, government-imposed credit targets are often achieved by abandoning appropriate due diligence, creating the environment for future NPAs. “Loan waivers, as the RBI has repeatedly argued, vitiate the credit culture and stress the budgets of the waiving state of central government. They are poorly targeted, and eventually reduce the flow of credit,” he writes in the essay “Banking Reforms”. “Agriculture needs serious attention, but not through loan waivers. An all-party agreement to this effect would be in the nation’s interest.”

Rajan also feels that the banking system is overburdened with non-performing loans. “This means that they find it difficult to grow their new lending to industry, and growth suffers.” He suggests that the government should keep its banks well capitalised, conditional on improvements in governance and management efficiency. “This is simply good accounting practice, for it prevents the government from building up contingent liabilities on bank balance sheets that a future government will have to pay for,” he writes.

21 MONTH ALREADY OVER IBA AND UFBU THROWING BALL TO EACH OTHER , NO ONE KNOWS WHEN 11TH BIPARITITE WILL BE SIGNED

See the dramebaazi yourself. Since Nov 2017 they are passing ball on each others court. Sab Mile huye hai. See the innocence of IBA. IBA is agreeing it is only an independent body , It has no powers. It can only request its participant members banks to give Mandate for negotiation on their behalf. How funny ?? IBA have power to the restrict Wage Hike to significantly lower rate. But IBA is so weak that its members banks are not listening to IBA. Why Banks are not giving full mandate ?? They should come up with their reasons ?? As I asked yesterday whether those Banks which have not given full mandate are in better position to provide more salary hike to top brass from Scale IV to Scale VII ?? Why so much drama and valuable time killing ??? Things are intentionally made complicated.
The moral of the story is by routine delay of BPS everybody will be benefited except bankers.
1. Union leaders are happy coz they will get hundreds of Crores of Levy on arrears.
2. Bank Managements are happy they will earn interest, commissions, dividends by investing and lending the money in market that is saved due to non payment to bankers raised salary for 30-32 months locked due to wage negotiation delay.
3. Income Tax Dept will also happy as you will pay more income tax on arrears contributing to gross income in Financial year in which negotiation will be finalized.
4. Bankers family members will be happy as they are planning to go for vacation or purchase goods, commodities for their house from the arrear amount.

Only Banker knows ki mera hi katega Har Baar 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Collect from Pravin Biswas page

Kale Jagdish Purushottam Indian-origin a private banker gets 13 years in jail for forgery, cheating in Singapore

An Indian-origin private banker was sentenced to 13 years jail on Thursday in Singapore, after he pleaded guilty to 20 forgery and cheating charges, and another 30 charges under the Computer Misuse Act for $10 million.

Another 503 similar charges were taken into consideration during sentencing of Kale Jagdish Purushottam, who had siphoned $10 million from accounts of Barclays Bank clients between June 2010 and January 2013, reported The Straits Times.

In an attempt to pay back his former clients, Kale, 43, forged signatures to siphon off $10 million from his present clients.

He then made more unauthorised transactions to recover and replace the sum but ended up with extra losses of at least $10 million instead.

Prior to joining the British bank in February 2010, Kale worked for UBS Singapore where he was the relationship manager for a company called Red Oak, which alleged that Kale had engaged in unauthorised foreign exchange transactions using the money in its account.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Ng Jean Ting said Kale agreed to pay Red Oak $14 million to avoid a legal case.

However, Kale paid the firm with money from his Barclays clients' bank accounts.

Ting told the court that Kale passed off the forged documents by copying and pasting the genuine signatures of authorised signatories into his own computer file.

To cover up the shortfall in the bank accounts of his three clients, he forged more documents to move money between his other client accounts.

He made about 81 unauthorised fund transfers in this manner.

Kale also forged documents to create accounts in his clients' names that would allow him to take up loans. These loan sums were then transferred to Red Oak or used to cover up the other unauthorised fund transfers, said the deputy public prosecutor

He raised 162 loans in the accounts maintained by six of his clients, according to the Singapore daily's report.

To cover up the loss of his clients', Kale tried to make money through unauthorised stock and foreign exchange transactions using his clients' accounts, she added.

"However, the unauthorised trades and other transactions caused further net losses of at least $10 million to Barclays," said DPP Ng.

On February 1, 2013, the Commercial Affairs Department received information that Kale might have forged his clients' signatures. He was also sacked in the same month.

Defence Counsel Anand Nalachandran told the court that Kale had not made the transfers or trades for personal financial benefit, but to satisfy what he thought was an obligation.

Having just moved to Barclays, he was faced with allegations (from Red Oak), and instead of heeding advice, he rather rashly acted and then did these things to satisfy his obligation," said Anand.

However, District Judge Ong Hian Sun pointed out that there was a "grave breach of trust" on Kale's end.

According to court documents, Barclays managed to recover $4 million after a settlement with Red Oak and Kale made restitution of $400,000 to the bank.

For each count of forgery for the purpose of cheating, Kale could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.

Main 5 key point changes in income tax announced in Budget 2019 today

Key Point

1> If you don’t have a PAN, you can file returns using Aadhaar.

2>Additional income tax deduction of ₹1.5 lakh on home loans for affordable houses costing below ₹45 lakh

3>The interest paid on home loan deduction will go up to ₹3.5 lakh, from the current ₹2 lakh for self-occupied house property

4>The government also announced ₹1.5 lakh income tax deduction on interest paid on loans for purchase of electric vehicles.

5>The government also announced 2% TDS on cash withdrawal on amount exceeding ₹1 crore in a year.

The government today proposed many changes in income tax provisions for this year. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her maiden budget kept the income tax slab rates unchanged but announced a slew of new income tax proposals that could impact many tax payers. The government today announced that Aadhaar and PAN would be made interchangeable for tax-filing purpose. This means that if you don’t have a PAN, you can file returns using Aadhaar.

— Additional income tax deduction of ₹1.5 lakh on home loans for affordable houses costing below ₹45 lakh. This benefit will be available for home loans taken till March 2020. Cumulatively, the interest paid on home loan deduction will go up to ₹3.5 lakh, from the current ₹2 lakh for self-occupied house property.

The government also announced ₹1.5 lakh income tax deduction on interest paid on loans for purchase of electric vehicles.

The government also announced 2% TDS on cash withdrawal on amount exceeding ₹1 crore in a year.

— Retail investors in CPSE(central public sector enterprises) ETFs could get ELSS-like income tax benefits, according to the Budget proposals. The government today set a ₹1.05 lakh crore divestment target this year. Currently, investments made in ELSS (equity linked savings scheme) mutual funds, which come with a lock-in period of three years, are eligible for tax deduction of up to ₹1.50 lakh under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act.

— The government today increased income tax surcharge for HNIs (high net worth individuals) earnings more than ₹2 crore a year. Those earning between ₹2-5 crore will have shell out 3% more, with surcharge rate being increased from 15% to 25%. Those earning above ₹5 crore will have to shell out a surcharge of 37%, from current 15%.

The budget was an effort at laying down a clear roadmap for tax administration over the next five years with introduction of a slew of measures specifically aimed at simplifying the tax filing process, e-assessment process and interchangeability of PAN with Aadhaar. Additionally, the ideology of taxing the super-rich continues to be carried out with increase of surcharge on individuals earning more than ₹2 crore. Also, in order to provide an impetus to affordable housing scheme, additional relief of ₹1.5 Lakh per year has been provided to first time home owners," Nitin Baijal, director at Deloitte Haskins and Sells LLP.

In other changes, the government proposed that persons who enter into certain high value transactions have to mandatorily file their tax returns even if their taxable limit is less than ₹2.5 lakh. The transactions include depositing an amount exceeding₹1 crore one or more current accounts; has incurred expenditure of more than ₹2 lakh for himself or any other person for travel to a foreign country; or has incurred expenditure of an amount or aggregate of the amounts exceeding ₹1 lakh towards consumption of electricity