Bank of America is close to calling off the sale of its £7 billion credit card operations in the UK, the Financial Times is reporting. If the deal is spiked, it would be the biggest signal to date that the country's vote to leave the EU has curtailed bidders' appetite for UK businesses. The auction had attracted interest from several potential bidders, including Lloyds Banking Group and private equity groups Cerberus and TPG. The US bank has told bidders it is reviewing the planned auction of MBNA, which has about 11 per cent of the UK credit card market, according to "people involved in the sale". Three former Barclays traders were found guilty last week of Libor manipulation almost four years to the day since the bank paid out £290 million in fines for fixing the key benchmark rate behind more than US$350 trillion in securities, Bloomberg reports. Last night (Australian time), the jury announced it couldn't reach verdicts on two other fellow traders, even though the judge placed weeklong reporting restrictions on the initial verdicts, allowing further jury deliberations - to no avail. A sixth ex-trader, Peter Johnson, characterised as "the main Libor submitter", pleaded guilty to manipulating the rate in October 2014. Banks in Singapore are collaborating on a new service to allow payments between account holders who have registered their Facebook IDs or Twitter usernames with their banks, rather than typing in an account number and sort code, the Financial Times reports. Participating banks include regional institutions DBS and UOB, and global banks with Asian retail operations, such as HSBC and Citi. The service will be based on Singapore's existing system, known as FAST, which brings together 20 banks to allow near-instant fund transfers. A pilot is scheduled for the first quarter of 2017, the FT reports. National Bank of Abu Dhabi and First Gulf Bank are aiming to merge, thereby to creating a banking heavyweight with US$175 billion in assets, Reuters reports. The new National Bank of Abu Dhabi will become one of the Middle East and North Africa's biggest banks when the tie-up is completed in the first quarter of 2017. With a combined market value of US$29.1 billion as of June 30, the new bank will overtake the likes of Britain's Standard Chartered and Royal Bank of Scotland and France's Credit Agricole. The merger will be completed via a share swap agreement, while the existing CEOs - Alex Thursby of NBAD (and formerly at ANZ) and Andre Sayegh of FGB - will continue to run the independent banks until then. Credit Suisse and UBS are acting as financial advisers to NBAD and FGB respectively. The House of Lords Committee on Financial Exclusion is to start its first evidence session later today in London with witnesses from the Money Advice Trust, MyBnk and Young Enterprise. According to a media note, approximately 1.5 million people in Britain do not have access to a bank account and many people lack confidence