Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney will travel to China next week to promote the country’s financial industry and help win business for its banks.

Mr. Flaherty will also be joined by the head of the country’s regulator of financial services, Julie Dickson, and financial industry executives, the Finance Ministry said in a statement. Mr. Flaherty will visit Beijing and Shanghai during the six-day trip.

“Most of Canada’s large financial institutions are active in China and they are looking to expand,” Mr. Flaherty said in the statement. “The Canadian financial sector is also eager to partner with Chinese companies in their global transactions.”

More..

Canadian lenders have enough capital to withstand losses without needing to raise more cash, Standard & Poor’s said.

“Like all banks elsewhere in the world, Canadian financial institutions are likely to experience additional losses as the recession continues,” the New York-based rating company said Thursday in a statement. “On the positive side, stress tests reveal that these banks have sufficient capital to withstand losses in what we believe is the likeliest case.”

Lenders including Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia exceed the minimum capital thresholds that S&P identified as necessary to cover losses, the company said. The tests also included credit unions in British Columbia and Quebec, and HSBC Canada.

More..

Companies issuing speculative-grade debt are the riskiest borrowers in the corporate credit universe because they are most likely to default on their debt. They have all sorts of bad habits such as high levels of indebtedness and highly volatile earnings. At the end of 2008 when the U. S. financial sector was collapsing, investors bailed out of this sector fearing heavy defaults and losses.

Those fears were realized as speculative-grade borrowers have been squeezed in a vise — on one side by falling earnings and on the other by contracting credit. The old story that credit is easy to get — until you really need it, best describes the plight of these companies.

More..

“I guess boring is cool and Canada is cool,” said Jim Little, chief brand officer with Royal Bank of Canada, explaining the bank’s decision to play up its nationality in an ad campaign aimed at U.S. and British capital markets.

A few months ago, you might never have known Canada’s No. 1 and 2 banks, Royal Bank and Toronto-Dominion Bank, were big players in global banking.

Canada’s success in emerging nearly unscathed from the financial crisis changed all that. Caution has a new cachet, and the nation’s bankers are embracing their inner maple leaf.

“We were always worrying about how we’d be seen, because when we’re in the United States, we act like Americans,” said TD Bank chief executive officer Ed Clark, whose U.S. retail operation has been marketed as “America’s most convenient bank.”

“Now it’s actually a positive to say, yes, we happened to be owned by a Canadian bank.”

It was perhaps U.S. President Barack Obama who opened the door to Canadian banking bravado when he hailed the nation’s sound banking system back in February. The compliment followed the World Economic Forum’s ranking of Canada’s banking system as the world’s soundest.

Before long, marketing executives at the big banks noticed a newfound interest in Canada’s conservative credentials among capital markets and investment banking clients.

More..