No fund hunt at Standard Chartered

London-based emerging-markets banking giant Standard Chartered today rejected calls for it to go in search of new funds to bolster its balance sheet.

Without naming Citigroup which yesterday claimed the bank needed to raise an extra $5 billion (£3.2 billion), chief executive Peter Sands said: "We don't pretend that we are totally unaffected by the financial crisis, and are not complacent, but we are well-capitalised, strongly liquid and have a conservative balance sheet with well-diversified assets."

Standard Chartered shares have recently been riding a roller-coaster. Their price had virtually halved in the past fortnight, but today they rallied more than 10%, putting on 71p to 751p.

Sands said that while there were signs of a consumer slowdown in its main Far Eastern markets, rates of growth there remained "in excess of growth rates in the West when they were at their fastest levels".