Banking

  Bloomberg Nigeria’s central bank has a new plan to lure $200 billion of inflows to Africa’s biggest economy: make it attractive for exporters to bring home foreign currency. The central bank of Nigeria will stop selling the greenback to local banks and instead ask lenders to source foreign currency on their own. The regulator will offer long-term cheap credit ...

  Bloomberg HSBC Holding Plc shut some branches in Hong Kong, including the one in its main office, after several staff tested positive for Covid. HSBC is closing the BL1, L3, L5 and L6 floors which offer branch services at its main building in the Central district, the London-based bank said in a statement. Five branches in Tuen Mun and ...

  Bloomberg After their worst start to a year in decades, Treasuries are reasserting their haven status and eclipsing the appeal of riskier assets — a troubling combination for Bank of America Corp (BofA) strategists. US sovereign debt attracted $7.4 billion in inflows, the most since the coronavirus pandemic first struck, according to a BofA note citing EPFR Global data ...

  Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc (StanChart) will hand back $750 million through a share buyback despite missing estimates, as the bank looks to cost cuts and higher interest rates to boost returns. Adjusted pretax profits for 2021 rose 55% to $3.9 billion, missing a company-compiled estimate of $4.3 billion, dragged down by a $300 million writedown on its investment in ...

  Bloomberg Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) shareholders will vote on whether the bank should tighten its standards for sustainable finance, action inspired by a 2021 pipeline financing deal that was criticised for green-washing and general concern over lax standards for so-called sustainability-linked debt. Investors for Paris Compliance, a shareholder advocacy group set up last year to hold Canadian companies ...

  Bloomberg Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA may seek a capital injection of about $4 billion, in a reassessment of the cost to stabilise the state-owned lender. The amount, which could be a billion euros more than estimated in December, is now seen by the treasury as necessary to comply with the bank-specific capital regulations set by the ...

  Bloomberg US authorities conducting a criminal probe into how Morgan Stanley executives handle block trades are examining recordings of phone calls between the bank and outside fund managers, according to people with knowledge of the inquiry. The recordings involve conversations between Pawan Passi, one of Morgan Stanley’s top equities executives in block trades, and investing clients, the people said, ...

  Bloomberg Uruguay’s central bank lifted its benchmark interest rate for a fifth consecutive meeting amid surging consumer prices and above-target inflation expectations. Policy makers boosted the key rate to 7.25% from 6.5%, their second consecutive increase of 75 basis points. “The international outlook can be characterised as most inflationary in past decades,” central bankers wrote in a statement. They ...

  Bloomberg Citigroup Inc is moving half a dozen senior equities staff from Hong Kong to Singapore and other markets, in one of the biggest signs yet the Chinese territory’s steadfast zero-Covid approach is prompting global banks to shift key staff out of the Asian financial hub. Lee McQueen, head of pan Asia equity blocks, is among managing directors relocating ...

  Bloomberg Bank of Korea (BOK) officials past and present, presidential advisers and global representatives are among potential successors to central bank Governor Lee Ju-yeol, whose impending departure is fuelling speculation over a replacement at a time of elevated inflation. Lee’s successor will inherit rapidly normalising monetary policy after two years of extraordinary stimulus to prop up a pandemic-hit economy. ...