Banking

BLOOMBERG  The Philippine central bank is likely to leave its key interest rate unchanged this week, Governor Felipe Medalla said, as cooling inflation gives monetary authorities reason to pause the most aggressive tightening cycle in two decades. “If for sure this is a permanent trend, clearly we must pause,” Medalla told reporters on the side-lines of a forum of the ...

BLOOMBERG  China’s central bank injected more long-term liquidity into the financial system for the sixth month in a bid to bolster economic growth after multiple indicators revealed faltering recovery momentum. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) offered 125 billion yuan ($18 billion) of medium-term lending facility, 25 billion yuan more than the amount maturing in May. Eight of 10 analysts ...

BLOOMBERG  Societe Generale SA’s fixed-income trading unit outperformed most peers in a volatile first quarter, as clients reacting to interest-rate hikes spurred revenue in an otherwise tough trading period. Income from debt and currencies trading jumped 16% from a year earlier, compared with a 9% gain at rival BNP Paribas, according to a statement. Revenue at the equities-trading unit fell ...

BLOOMBERG  UBS Group AG Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sergio Ermotti, who’s overseeing the takeover of Credit Suisse Group AG in a government-brokered rescue, said he saw problems at UBS’s smaller competitor as early as 2015. “UBS was very well positioned from 2015, we had done our homework after the financial crisis,” Ermotti said in an interview with the Schweiz am ...

BLOOMBERG  HSBC Holdings Plc will pay a combined $75 million to settle a top US regulator’s allegations that it engaged in manipulative and deceptive trading practices and broke recordkeeping rules. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said that a US unit of the London-based bank would pay $45 million over its past trading related to swaps and bond issuances, among ...

BLOOMBERG  Customers are coming back to Danske Bank A/S as Denmark’s largest lender is putting past scandals behind it. Danske’s retail customers are growing for the first time in 10 years in its home country, according to a Voxmeter poll of the Nordic nation’s 20 largest banks, cited by local media, including Finans. The lender attracted a net inflow of ...

BLOOMBERG  Taiwanese banks have slashed their exposure to China to the lowest level in at least a decade as increasingly fraught ties across the Strait deter lenders from expanding in the world’s second-largest economy. Locally registered banks in Taiwan have cut back their total lending, investments and interbank transactions in China to NT$1.1 trillion ($34.6 billion) as of the end ...

BLOOMBERG  ING Groep NV plans to buy back as much as €1.5 billion ($1.65 billion) worth of stock after higher interest rates helped lift profit past analysts’ expectations. Shares of the lender rose, after first-quarter results showed interest income and provisions for loan losses came in better than analysts had expected. Net income more than tripled from a year earlier, ...

BLOOMBERG  US consumer borrowing increased in March by more than expected on one of the largest spikes in credit-card balances on record. Total credit increased $26.5 billion, the most in four months, after a February gain of $15 billion, Federal Reserve data showed. The figure, which isn’t adjusted for inflation, compared with the median estimate of a $17 billion increase ...

BLOOMBERG  The European Central Bank (ECB) needs to continue raising interest rates amid a “too high” underlying inflation rate, said Governing Council member Klaas Knot. The ECB will have to raise borrowing costs “as long as the underlying inflation hasn’t been tamped down,” Knot said in an interview on the Buitenhof TV show. “Our real problem at the moment is ...