• Boston Consulting Group and the Association for Financial Markets in Europe have warned that Europe’s SMEs will be the biggest losers if banks face significant restructuring costs and extra capital requirements from a hard Brexit. Their research found that UK-based lenders would face €15bn in restructuring expenses and as much as €40bn of extra Tier 1 capital requirements if there was a hard Brexit.
  • AIB has withdrawn its financial support for Fairpoint, leading to the debt management company’s shares being suspended after its 2016 accounts could not be signed off.
  • The Car Finance Company has said there is ‘material uncertainty’ over its future following a decision by its US-based private equity owner, Pine Brook, to withdraw support for the business. The company’s latest accounts show that the proportion of customers in arrears more than doubled from 8.2% in 2015 to 18.4% in 2016
  • PayPal has made a strategic investment in LendUp, an online sub-prime lender, that targets US consumers considered too risky by traditional banks