Chairman, Board of Directors of Mercantile Bank Ltd Morshed Alam, MP, its Managing Director & CEO M Ehsanul Haque and Managing Director & CEO of NEC Money, Spain Ikram Farazy seen in the signing ceremony held between the two companies.

Mercantile Bank Limited has recently signed an agreement with NEC Money, Spain, one of the most reputed money transfer companies in Europe.

An agreement has been signed in this regard between NEC Money, Spain and Mercantile Bank Limited, according to a statement.

NEC Money operates remittance business in Spain covering whole Europe where a large number of Bangladeshi expatriates have been living and working around. With this agreement, new window has been opened for the Bangladeshi expatriates from different countries in Europe to remit their hard-earned money to their relatives and family members in Bangladesh safely, quickly and conveniently through any branch of Mercantile Bank Limited.

M Ehsanul Haque, Managing Director & CEO of Mercantile Bank Limited and Ikram Farazy, Managing Director & CEO of NEC Money, Spain signed the agreement on behalf of their respective organizations.

Morshed Alam, MP, Chairman, Board of Directors of Mercantile Bank Ltd. was present at the event as chief guest and Alhaj Akram Hossain (Humayun), Chairman, Executive Committee of the Bank was present as special guest.  Besides, Mr. A. S. M. Feroz Alam, Vice Chairman, Board of Directors, Mr. Md. Abdul Jalil Chowdhury, AMD, Mr. Md. Quamrul Islam Chowdhury, Mr. Mohammad Masoom & Mr. Matiul Hasan, DMDs of Mercantile Bank Ltd. and Mr. Mohammad Babul Miah, director of NEC Money along with other high officials from both the organisations were also present on the occasion.

Head of Marketing & Development Division of First Security Islami Bank Limited (FSIBL) Azam Khan and CEO & Founder of Social Business Youth Alliance-Global Shazeeb M Khairul Islam exchanging documents after signing an MoU on behalf of their respective organisations in the city recently. According to the deal, FSIBL becomes official sponsor of Social Business Champ-2015. The competition aims to raising awareness about social business among Bangladeshi Youth.

The country's banking sector is stable and capable of tackling any risk, according to a Bangladesh Bank document, which attributes strong capital adequacy and sufficient liquidity to the banks' strength, reports BSS. Constant internal and external monitoring, upgrading loan classification and provisioning to the global standard and ensuring good governance in the board of directors have also contribute to the higher resilience and the strength of the banking sector, the document said.
According to the BB, the risk-weighted capital adequacy ratio, which is one of the major indicators of the banks' health, stood at 11.35 per cent at the end of December when the amount of reserve capital in banking sector rose to Taka 71 thousand 754 crore. 
"The higher capital adequacy ratio and reserve capital boosted the bank's resilience to risks," BB said.
It said the loan classification and provisioning also upgraded to the international standard, with limiting the time for loan classification and making minimum capital requirement (MCR) mandatory for all banks.
The central bank said the profit before tax and provisioning in the banking sector also rose to Taka 21 thousand 265 crore in 2014 from the previous year's Taka 18 thousand 610 crore.
The document showed that liquidity in banks was Taka 3 thousand 364 crore, which was usual for the country's banking sector, having 56 banks in operations.
"The adequate liquidity helps maintain stability in the call money market where the interest rate remains around 7.0 percent for long," BB said.
The credit growth also marked 13.99 percent rise in 2014 when banks disbursed Taka 5 lakh 28 thousand 755 crore compared to Taka 4 lakh 63 thousand 871 crore only to the individual borrowers, indicating dynamism of economy.
BB said the banks also disbursed loans to export oriented industries from the Export Development Fund (EDF) at only 2.0 percent rate of interest to help accelerate the country's export earnings.

The banking sector is left with only Tk 3,364 crore of idle money, not Tk 90,000 crore as reported in the media, Bangladesh Bank said yesterday.

The banking regulator said the amount is not too big compared to the number of banks.

Currently, there are 56 banks in the country and often media reports mentioned that the banking industry has Tk 90,000 crore to Tk 100,000 crore of idle money.

“It's not true,” BB said in a statement. “After meeting the statutory requirement, banks invest its funds in the government securities, which are safe and profitable.”

The BB also said the call money market remains quite stable with around 7 percent interest rate.

The central bank data shows banks' capital adequacy ratio has also increased to 11.35 percent, significantly higher than the regulatory requirement under Basel II of 10.51 percent.

Despite odds, loan disbursement by the banks also increased by 13.99 percent in 2014 compared to the same period a year ago, the BB said.

Europe's banks need to cut costs by a fifth and simultaneously grow revenues by 15 percent just to get their profitability to match their cost of capital, a study said on Monday.

European banks' return on equity (RoE), a key measure of profitability, is likely to average less than half their cost of capital again this year, lagging well behind US rivals as lenders struggle with high costs and weak economic growth, according to a study by consultancy EY.

That means job cuts are inevitable and restructuring is likely to gather pace this year. EY's European Banking Barometer showed RoE is expected to improve by 1.6 percentage points this year on average, but that would only lift it to 4.4 percent, compared with an average cost of capital of 9.4 percent and average returns of 12.2 percent for US banks.

EY surveyed 226 senior bankers in 11 markets. The findings indicate banks in the euro zone in particular continue to struggle to generate returns anywhere near what it costs them to raise capital, meaning investors would be better off putting their cash elsewhere.

The euro zone's banking supervisor has said returning to sustainable profitability is the industry's biggest challenge, and firms may need to sell off businesses.

British banks have restructured more and their returns are predicted to climb to 9.5 percent this year, their highest since 2007, EY said.

EY said 69 percent of respondents to its European survey said they were considering restructuring options, including selling or buying assets or forming partnerships or joint ventures, up from 55 percent a year ago.

"Both weaker growth and structural reform are forcing banks to seriously reconsider the viability of some business units. In particular, we may start to see concrete evidence of the effects of the structural reform agenda on the universal banking model," said Steven Lewis, EY's global banking & capital markets analyst.

Costs at Europe's banks are expected to fall by an average of 1.6 percent this year, and respondents predicted revenues would grow by 3.5 percent, both improvements on last year, EY said.

Staff costs represent about 54 percent of operating costs, and 43 percent of respondents said they expect headcount to fall this year. The biggest cuts are expected in Nordic countries, Italy and Austria, EY said.