American Banker speculates on what President-elect Donald Trump will do with the CFPB, which has enhanced consumer financial protections in recent years; Trump has not been definitive but rather generally against current levels of financial regulation; in October, the US Court of Appeals for DC found that the CFPB's director could be unilaterally replaced by the US President; the agency has until November 25 to appeal; if they should lose the appeal, the publication poses options for the incoming President of (a) pressuring current Director Cordray to resign then replacing him with someone who will drop the legal appeal, or (b) have Republican lawmakers in the next congressional session replace the single director oversight with a five-member commission and subject the CFPB to Congressional appropriations review. Source
Alibaba-backed Ant Financial sold $578 million worth of securities backed against small loans granted to consumers on "Double 11" day, the festival to celebrate singlehood and the world's largest online shopping day; Chongqing Alibaba Small Loan provided the underlying loans for the asset-backed security through an online consumer credit portal, Ant Check Later ("Huabei" in Chinese); the Shanghai Stock Exchange approved the offering and allowed it to be privately placed last Monday to qualified institutional investors. Source
Super apps in Asia have been a resounding success. However, will Europe and the U.S. see the same adoption? We spoke to Revolut's U.S. head of growth to find out.
According to a report from Reuters, more large businesses in China are increasing their internal mergers and acquisitions teams and relying less on investment banks for intermediary deal support; Fosun, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. are examples, with all three reportedly expanding their in-house mergers and acquisitions teams. Source
The Bank of England kept its central bank borrowing rate at 0.25% and decided to continue with its $86 billion asset purchase program; while no changes were made to monetary policy, the BOE changed its guidance; with an increased focus on inflation in the region, the BOE said it would be prepared to raise rates in order to keep inflation at its 2% target rate. Source
- OnDeck Adds Former GE Capital and Sun Trust Executives to Finance Team
- Elastic Line of Credit Surpasses $1 Billion in Total Funding
- SenseTime Raises US$410M Series B Financing
- BitGo Raises $42.5M in Series B Funding
- Creditas Raises $50M in Series C Funding
- CAN Capital Makes Three Strategic Hires to Strengthen Sales and Technology Teams
- How asset managers like FinEx Asia are using AI to disrupt traditional bank lending
- Digital challenger Starling to hit profit in 2019 says founder Anne Boden as European expansion takes crucial step
- Compass gets $450M from SoftBank; real estate portal now valued at $2.2B
- Finance teams are ‘bottlenecking’ banks’ digital transformations
- Prosper Appoints Claire Huang to Board of Directors