Financial Times: Spain’s banking sector suffered an unexpected blow on Wednesday when the European Court of Justice ordered lenders to hand back to their clients all the money they made on “unfair” mortgage floor clauses. […] Floor clauses in effect impose a minimum interest rate on floating-rate mortgages by setting a limit on how far
U.S. developments Over the last months, it has been reported that Volkswagen reached a 15 billion dollar settlement with the authorities, the consumers and the car dealers in the United States. Contrary to these developments, Volkswagen has raised a motion to dismiss the ADR investor case. The judge will hear this motion during a trial
Following the 2008 financial crisis and the extremely damaging ensuing bailout of several financial institutions, governments decided it was no longer up to taxpayers to foot the bill of mismanaged banks (“bail-OUT”, meaning by OUTsiders), and to move to a “bail–IN” approach (making “INsiders” pay instead). This led to the EU BRRD (Bank Recovery and
Dozens of Volkswagen AG officials in Germany have hired U.S. criminal defense lawyers as the Justice Department ramps up meetings with managers to gather evidence that may lead to charges against executives, people familiar with the matter said. U.S. authorities have traveled to Germany to arrange interviews with managers and seek cooperation in their probe
A new player in the robo-advice market has emerged but unlike most robo-advice platforms the model is focused on seniors. The company is called True-Link and they best known for offering seniors Visa card protection against financial fraud and abuse. “We think seniors are the most exciting market in financial services today,” Mr. Stinchcombe
The Evidence based Investor has published an interview with the founder of the People’s Trust, Daniel Godfrey. In the interview, Mr. Godfrey discusses how the People’s Trust will create a new innovative model for asset management companies. Mr. Godfrey suggests that the People’s Trust will focus on long term value investing using a seven-year time
The 8th international congress of the European Federation of Building Societies (EFBS) – ‘Brave New World for Finance’ – took place on 19 October 2016 in Budapest. The conference was opened by Mr. Dániel Palotai, the Managing Director of the Hungarian National Bank, and Mr. Boris Vujčić, Governor of the Croatian National Bank. Six roundtable
Following an open letter sent out to policy makers and stakeholders by BETTER FINANCE and Efama, the CFA Institute joined forces with both organisations to denounce the lack of disclosure to EU citizens as individual investors of the past performance of investment products in the required key information documents for Packaged retail and insurance-based investment products
The European Central Bank and the central banks of the Eurozone launched a common European platform for the settlement of securities transactions called Target2-Securities (T2S). Due to integration of central securities depositories into a common European platform, the Central Securities Clearing Corporation (KDD) in Slovenia is terminating all accounts that do not have a designated
According to a survey from fund manager Schroders – that surveyed 20,000 investors in 28 countries – , the majority of retail investors expect a 12% return from investments over a year despite investing mainly in low risk assets. Less than 25 % of the retail investors are planning to invest in equities that may