The major British bank HSBC saw its shares edge by 50 percent since September as it struggled on European and Asian markets. Investors eye the bank as very lucrative option in the middle of pandemic chaos and thus pour fresh capital in HSBC shares. In October, HSBC recorded better-than-expected third quarter results on cost savings.

Do you remember anything about credit ratings? We mean the funny looking numbers and letters that used to make credit cheaper or expensive. Well, we should all forget about that era of financial discipline. With the coronavirus death toll surging to record highs, countries around the globe spurred spending, boosting debt numbers to record levels. No one really cares about ratings anymore.

The Commission approved a proposal to allow clearing houses in Britain to continue serving EU customers for 18 months from January. During that period EU banks should find another way sort out their clearances, VP Valdis Dombrovskis said,

Two research reports showed on Tuesday that еconomic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak will cause a sharp rise in loan losses at European banks, with more than €400bn ($458bn) of losses estimated in the next three years.

A group of 16 Eurozone banks said on Thursday a “truly European” unified payments system is expected to be up and running in 2022, Reuters reported. European policymakers have long sought a “home grown” rival to take on Mastercard and Visa.

The US Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan (BoJ) and European Central Bank (ECB), which together cover almost half of global output, will all convene meetings of policymakers this week after the pandemic-driven freezing of economies and turmoil in financial markets propelled them into action.

Italy’s UniCredit on Wednesday became the first major euro zone bank to write down the value of its loans to reflect the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis. Italy’s biggest bank by assets said it would book around €900m in additional loan loss provisions in the first quarter to take into account an expected 13% contraction in the euro zone’s 2020 gross domestic product.

Six Eurozone banks have fallen short of the European Central Bank’s capital requirements and have been told to shore up their balance sheets or face tighter controls, ECB said on Tuesday. The Eurozone’s top banking supervisors kept both their mandatory capital requirements and their “guidance”, which is not binding, unchanged from the previous year, at an average 2.1% and 1.5%, respectively. 

Greece’s four systemic banks have canceled or are planning to cancel and replace up to 15,000 credit and debit cards after the payment card data used by some of their customers on a Greek online tourist services portal was hacked, Еkathimerini reports.

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Financial institutions have channeled $745bn over the past three years into companies planning new coal-fired power plants, according to a report by environmental groups, who are urging global banks to stop financing the sector.