The US is seeking more than US$10 billion from French bank BNP Paribas SA to settle criminal charges that it violated sanctions on Iran, Sudan and Cuba, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Citing people familiar with the negotiations between the bank and the US Department of Justice, the newspaper said the two sides are still locked in talks and that BNP wants to pay less than US$8 billion.
Both numbers are far higher than earlier reports of less than US$4 billion, and would far outpace the US$1.9 billion British bank HSBC Holdings PLC was fined in 2012 for routinely handling money transfers for countries under US sanction and for Mexican drug traffickers.
The Journal said a final resolution of the BNP case, which related to the bank’s activity in 2002 to 2009, is “likely weeks away.”
A person familiar with the talks could not comment on the Journal’s number, but said the fine could be above US$5 billion.
The source said the amount is linked to other key issues under negotiation, including whether the bank pleads guilty to felony charges and whether it keeps its US banking license.
According to the Journal, the two sides are also discussing whether BNP, as part of its punishment, will be temporarily denied the right to transfer money into and out of the US, a central part of any foreign bank’s business in the US.
The report said US Department of Justice prosecutors continue to press the bank to plead guilty to the charges, which theoretically could risk its US banking license, but in a separate case last week involving a bank helping thousands of Americans avoid taxes, Switzerland’s Credit Suisse AG pleaded guilty to one felony charge and was fined US$2.6 billion and it was allowed to keep its banking license.
That was the first time in 20 years a major bank had been convicted on US criminal charges.
Officials at BNP, the largest publicly traded French bank, could not be immediately contacted to comment on the Journal report.
Last year it set aside 789 million euros (US$1.1 billion) to resolve the US sanctions case, but in its first-quarter earnings report late last month, BNP noted “a possibility that the amount of the fines could be far in excess of the amount of the provision.”
Earlier this month, a person familiar with the negotiations said US prosecutors were insisting that it plead guilty to charges it did business with sanctioned parties in Iran, Sudan and elsewhere; pay a large fine; and fire 12 employees involved in the transactions.
However, BNP chief executive Jean-Laurent Bonnafe had expressed grave concerns to regulators and prosecutors about lodging a guilty plea, in part because it could endanger the bank’s US license, according to the source.
BNP would likely be able to absorb such a large settlement without being destabilized.
At the end of the first quarter, the bank had 90 billion euros in shareholder equity, a 264 billion euro liquidity reserve and a strong 10.6 percent capital ratio, but the fine could impact its shareholders.
Net income for the quarter was 1.7 billion euros, on 9.9 billion euros of revenue.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS