Deutsche Bank announced on Wednesday that its first-quarter results would be hit by litigation costs of about 1.5 billion euros (US$1.6 billion), but assured that it would still turn a profit.
Deutsche Bank “expects to report litigation costs of approximately 1.5 billion euros for the first quarter 2015,” the bank said in a statement.
“Despite these costs, Deutsche Bank will be profitable in the first quarter and will report near record revenues,” said the statement, which gave no information about the legal disputes giving rise to the charges.
The announcement follows reports that Deutsche Bank is poised to settle a case with US authorities investigating alleged attempts to fix the LIBOR benchmark interest rate.
The settlement would see Deutsche Bank pay a fine of more than US$1.5 billion and its British subsidiary, Deutsche Bank Group Services, plead guilty, Bloomberg News reported on April 10.
Deutsche Bank and other banks, including Switzerland’s UBS AG, the Royal Bank of Scotland PLC and JPMorgan & Co in the US have already been hit with heavy fines by the European Commission for allegedly rigging the LIBOR, which is used to peg millions of interest rate-sensitive contracts and loans around the world.
Deutsche Bank was fined 725 millions euros for its role in the affair, which came to light in 2012.
Separately, the Bank of America asked a US federal appeals court on Wednesday to toss out a US$1.27 billion fine against it, saying the case brought by the federal government after the 2008 financial crisis should never have gone to trial.
The bank said in papers filed with the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that the case against it was unfair and “utterly unprecedented.”
It said the trial judge — Jed Rakoff — should be removed from the case if it is returned to the lower court.
The bank said Rakoff might be perceived as biased based on comments he made, including criticizing the US Department of Justice for failing to prosecute bank executives for their roles in the crisis.
The bank, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, called the penalty “grossly excessive.”
The judge declined to comment.
Last year, he said the fine was necessary to punish the bank for a program “driven by a hunger for profits and oblivious to the harms thereby visited, not just on the immediate victims, but also on the financial system as a whole.”
Additional reporting by AP
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”