The British government has cancelled its plans to sell its holdings in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group this year in the wake of Brexit, Reuters reports. The government had planned to raise £9 billion through the sales but the market upheaval following last week's vote has forced it to hold off until next year at the earliest. The UK Treasury owns 73 per cent of RBS and nine per cent of Lloyds. It also owns a portfolio of mortgages worth more than £10 billion that were originated by Bradford and Bingley. The world's biggest banks are pushing regulators and politicians for answers so they can plan for the future of their London operations after the UK's vote to leave the EU. Lenders including HSBC, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley had warned of thousands of job cuts if they were unable to use London as a jumping off point for selling into the EU, and some senior bankers have told the Financial Times that October is too long to wait and see. The Bank for International Settlements has appointed Monica Ellis as its new secretary general. She replaces Peter Dittus, who held the post for 11 years. Ellis has spent 20 years at BIS, where her roles have included head of credit analysis, deputy head of risk control, head of communications and deputy secretary general. Ten Chinese banks will join a pilot scheme to directly fund tech start-ups. All are set to submit plans to the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the Chinese online news service Caixin reports. It reports that three of the ten, The Bank of Shanghai, Shanghai Huarui Bank and SPD Silicon Valley Bank, have each set up a subsidiary to make equity investments, an arrangement allowing them to sidestep the legal restriction on commercial banks directly holding shares in non-financial institutions. Dave Jones, president of the SPD Silicon Valley Bank, projected that successful investments may bring in returns of up to US$200,000 each, on average. Scott Sanborn, a six-year veteran of Lending Club, has been affirmed as the company's new CEO, Finextra reports. Sanborn has been the US marketplace lender's interim CEO role for the past two months, stepping in after company founder and CEO Renaud Laplanche resigned in the wake of an unauthorised sale of US$22 million in near-prime loans to an institutional investor. Lending Club is also to cut 179 jobs, ahead of an expected 30 per cent drop in loan originations in the second quarter of 2016.