Banking

  Bloomberg Australia’s central bank chief Philip Lowe said the case for outsized interest-rate increases has “diminished” now that the cash rate is approaching “more normal settings,” suggesting smaller moves ahead. The Reserve Bank’s board will debate the merits of hiking by a quarter-percentage point or a half-point at its October 4 meeting, Governor Lowe said in response to Australian ...

Bloomberg An overvalued dollar is now the only possible hedge for what’s turning into the biggest destruction of shareholder value since the global financial crisis, according to macro strategists at Citigroup Inc. With global equities already down $23 trillion in 2022, the greenback’s inverse relationship to risk assets makes it the only game in town for at least the rest ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp (BofA) is starting a paid sabbatical program to reward its long-term employees, starting with four weeks off for those who have spent 15 years with the company. Beginning next year, the bank will offer time off to let employees “reinvest in their priorities in life,” according to a memo seen by Bloomberg News. The move ...

  Bloomberg China’s bond traders are growing less optimistic about the prospects for more monetary easing, if the derivatives markets are anything to go by. The nation’s one-year interest rate swaps, which show investor expectations of funding costs in the future, climbed for the seventh straight day on Friday in their longest rising streak since August 2019. That’s because China’s ...

Bloomberg Russia’s central bank signalled it’s close to taking a pause from easing monetary policy after delivering the smallest interest-rate cut of the current cycle, as renewed risks of inflation prompt more caution. Governor Elvira Nabiullina said “we are close to the conclusion of the easing cycle,” with the central bank describing current monetary conditions as “overall neutral.” Policy makers ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s six-year foray into consumer banking — the unit dubbed Marcus — is the focus of a new review at the Federal Reserve. Fed officials have been looking into the Wall Street giant’s online-banking platform aimed at retail customers, according to people with knowledge of the matter. For at least several weeks, they’ve been peppering Goldman ...

Bloomberg The yen rebounded from near a 24-year low on signs the Bank of Japan is preparing an intervention to prop up the currency. The central bank conducted a so-called rate check in the currency market, meaning officials called asking for an indicative price at which it could intervene, according to a person with direct knowledge of the events. The ...

Bloomberg United Bank for Africa (UBA), a Nigerian lender with operations in 20 African countries, plans to increase lending rates by as much as 400 basis points to protect its profit margins. The repricing of loans will affect all corporate, commercial and personal banking credits, Chief Executive Officer Oliver Alawuba said on an investor call in Lagos, the nation’s commercial ...

Bloomberg China extended its currency defense by setting its reference rate for the yuan with the strongest bias on record. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) set the fix at 6.9116 per dollar, 598 pips stronger than the average estimate in a Bloomberg survey of analysts and traders. The strong bias exceeded the previous record of 454 pips seen and ...

  Bloomberg A senior executive of Bank of East Asia Ltd’s China unit has been detained on suspicion of accepting bribes, according to a report by Cailian. Bank of East Asia (China) executive vice president and head of Northern China, Chen Zhiren was detained and is being held in Beijing, according to the report, which said the investigation is related ...