Game over for analyst; Deutsche not giving up

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Brought down: Former Goldman Sachs banking analyst Damilare Sonoiki and Cleveland Browns linebacker Mychal Kendricks were charged by the U.S. Justice Department with insider trading in a scheme that allegedly netted the player more than $1 million. The two were also sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for securities fraud. According to the criminal charges, which carry a maximum prison sentence of 25 years plus large fines, Kendricks gave Sonoiki — who is also a former writer on the ABC sitcom “Black-ish” — cash and other perks, including football tickets, in exchange for inside information on four corporate acquisitions in 2014. "Their attorneys said both men are expected to plead guilty," the Wall Street Journal reports. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times

No surrender: Despite sizeable workforce reductions and cutbacks in its Wall Street business and other areas, Deutsche Bank has no plans to give up its global presence, CEO Christian Sewing asserted Wednesday. “Our global ambitions will not be up for debate under my leadership,” he said at a banking conference in Frankfurt. “I am quite convinced that this global position is just as important for our economy today as it was after the fall of the [Berlin] Wall.”

Sewing also said Europe’s fragmented banking regulation is an impediment to cross-border mergers on the continent. “The emergence of true European champions hinges on a unified regulation in Europe, a single financial market,” Sewing said.

Financial Times

Robo stop: While other banks are jumping into robo investing, UBS is no longer offering new clients its two-year-old automated online investment service, “marking one of the first significant casualties in the U.K. robo-advice market.” The service, called SmartWealth, was part of a $1 billion investment by the bank to attract younger and less wealthy clients.

New York Times

RIP: Henry Arnhold, the former chairman of the Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder bank, which was sold to Blackstone Group in 2015, has died at the age of 96. “Arnhold was the patriarch of the Arnhold family, which ran a boutique investment bank and brokerage firm and later an investment management company overseeing more than $100 billion in assets,” the paper notes. He was “the last member of a generation of prominent German Jewish bankers who escaped Nazi persecution, re-established their family business in the New World and later helped rebuild Dresden after the fall of the Iron Curtain.”

Elsewhere

Blockchain first: A Samsung unit has gone live with a blockchain-based platform that allows customers to make transactions using the mobile banking systems of different banks by logging into just one account. The platform, called BankSign, was launched by the Korea Federation of Banks to allow domestic banks “to strengthen their verification systems by digitizing both mobile and online banking.”

Fined: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered BNP Paribas to pay a $90 million civil penalty to settle charges that it attempted to manipulate the ISDAfix benchmark, which is used to price swaps, commercial mortgages and structured debt securities.

Quotable

“Europe does not need as many banks as possible. Europe first and foremost needs strong banks.” — Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing.