Briefs: Fitch upgrades BOQ, Banks' role in commodities questioned, Fees coming on deposits, Bank str 24 November 2014 4:13PM Banking Day staff Briefs, Bank of Queensland finalised a trifecta of increases in its long-term credit rating on Friday, with Fitch Ratings lifting its issuer default rating to A- from BBB+. Moody's and Standard & Poor's made corresponding changes over the last year. Fitch also affirmed the long-term ratings of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank at A- and Heritage Bank at BBB+. The involvement of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley in the business of storing and moving commodities like oil, aluminium, uranium and copper gives them unfair trading advantages in financial markets, a study by the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found. The report said Goldman used its stockpile of aluminium - in a cluster of warehouses near Detroit - to cause delivery delays to create shortages and inflate the metal's price. Banks in Germany will soon be charging large corporate clients and asset managers fees on certain accounts to discourage large deposits, in a reaction to European Central Bank stimulus policy. "We reserve the right to charge some large corporates a fee on parked liquidity" above a certain threshold, Commerzbank told the Wall Street Journal. The bank said it would encourage large clients to shift extra cash to alternative investments and would retain its policy of not charging fees, or negative interest rates, for retail clients or small and medium-size businesses. Institutional investor AMP has issued research arguing that banks' stress tests do not account for the impact of a severe house price fall on mortgagors that do not default. According to a Fairfax Media report, AMP estimated that severe housing stress could push more than 50 per cent of borrowers into negative equity and this would force the banks to raise capital above and beyond losses from defaults. AMP's research follows a recent speech by Australian Prudential Regulation Authority chairman Wayne Byres, in which he warned that that banks may not be adequately prepared to deal with a housing-induced crisis.