Banking

Bloomberg Hamza Lemssouguer, a former top debt trader at Credit Suisse Group, is raising hundreds of millions of dollars from Squarepoint Capital as he starts his own hedge fund. Lemssouguer, 31, known for amassing large, risky bets on corporations, will manage the money as part of a venture with London-based Squarepoint. The Moroccan-born trader, who hopes to attract other investors, ...

Bloomberg Morgan Stanley is preparing to invest $1.36 million in five startups led by women or ethnic minorities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, expanding a program that’s run for the past four years in the US. The Wall Street bank aims to help groups that often struggle to find seed capital. According to Morgan Stanley, less than 3% ...

Bloomberg The Czech central bank pledged to keep raising borrowing costs after lifting interest rates by the most in nearly a quarter century, pushing the koruna higher and angering the government with the European Union’s most aggressive anti-inflationary campaign. Policy makers increased the benchmark rate by 75 basis points to 1.5%, exceeding expectations for a half-point increase. The move followed ...

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc predicts India’s central bank will raise its reverse repo rate next week rather than the December increase expected earlier, becoming one of the first big banks to forecast the rollback of emergency measures as growth recovers and inflation expectations stay high. Governor Shaktikanta Das will probably announce on October 8 a 15 basis point increase in the ...

Bloomberg Ukraine’s central bank won’t stand in the way of the hryvnia’s rally as it’s helping keep a lid on the country’s double-digit inflation, central bank Deputy Governor Serhiy Nikolaychuk said. With a 6.5% gain against the dollar this year, the currency is among the world’s best performers and beats all of its east European peers, most of which have ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong’s central bank asked lenders to report their exposure to debt-laden China Evergrande Group on concern over potential systemic risks to the region’s financial system, according to people familiar with the matter. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) queried lenders in the city, giving them 24 hours to respond on their financial commitments to China’s most indebted developer, ...

Bloomberg Sri Lanka aims to bolster its currency reserves and finances through a sprawling plan that includes boosting export earnings repatriation and tax reforms, as well as outside funding, currency swaps and possibly repurchasing or renegotiating debt, its central bank chief said. Ajith Nivard Cabraal, the central bank of Sri Lanka’s newly appointed governor, said the country aims to provide ...

Bloomberg A Bank of England (BOE) rate hike looks likely this year if UK supply problems don’t ease and inflation pressures aren’t tempered by the end of government job support. That’s according to Allan Monks, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., who said in a note to clients that while the Monetary Policy Committee would prefer to delay a ...

Bloomberg Japan’s financial regulator (FSA) is keeping a closer watch on the nation’s banks and insurers as their drawn out hunt for yield pushes them into riskier non-traditional assets. After years of ultra-low interest rates and record levels of deposits, it’s “inevitable” that firms are taking bigger risks, according to Toshinori Yashiki, who’s in charge of assessing risk at banks ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp.’s (BofA) online-banking platform went down for several hours, leaving thousands of customers locked out of their accounts before service was restored. The outage started in the morning and began to be resolved midday. Bank of America’s website and app were both at full capacity in New York, according to a company spokesman. “Today, some of ...