Weekly Global News Wrap Up: Credit Suisse to sell B2B investment fund platform; Citi kills some card perks

And German banks could face $695m over dividend tax concerns.

From Reuters:

Spain’s Allfunds Group is buying Credit Suisse’s business-to-business investment fund platform InvestLab for an undisclosed sum as the investment services industry consolidates to reap the benefits of scale.

Credit Suisse will take a stake of up to 18% in the combined business, the two companies said on Tuesday. It will also receive an undisclosed cash payment.

From Bloomberg:

Citigroup Inc. will discontinue free trip insurance and price-protection guarantees from all its U.S. cards, while other perks, including car-rental and lost-baggage insurance, will be pulled from some accounts. Separately on Tuesday, the bank introduced a new way for customers to redeem their ThankYou points.

The bank’s new offering -- known as Pay With Points -- will alert customers any time they make purchases eligible to be paid using ThankYou points. Card holders will be able to select what purchases they would like to redeem for points using the bank’s mobile app. Each point will be valued at 0.8 cents when redeemed using Pay With Points, so an $8 purchase would require 1,000 points.

From Bloomberg:

German banks may face about $695m (EUR610m) of costs after helping investors take improper advantage of a loophole to reduce taxes on dividends, according to the country’s regulator.

About 60 lenders were directly involved in so-called cum-cum trades that allowed foreign investors to profit from tax breaks meant for Germany-based shareholders, a BaFin spokesman said, citing a survey by the regulator.