Banking

BLOOMBERG  Australia’s central bank weighed the risk of upside surprises to inflation from a tight labour market and rising home prices when it decided to deliver a surprise interest-rate increase in May. The Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) board discussed the case to pause for a second straight month and concluded the arguments were “finely balanced” before raising the cash ...

BLOOMBERG  Japan’s biggest banks are predicting their highest profits in years, though a cautious outlook is holding them back from returning surplus capital to shareholders. Net income at Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFJ) Inc, the nation’s biggest lender, is poised to surge to 1.3 trillion yen ($9.6 billion) for the year ending in March 2024, according to a filing, which will ...

BLOOMBERG  Morgan Stanley is considering a 7% cut in its Asia-Pacific investment banking workforce, with China taking the biggest hit as deteriorating relations with the US and weaker economic growth curb dealmaking, people familiar with the matter said. The bank is likely to start communicating with affected bankers as soon as this week, with more than 40 jobs at risk, ...

BLOOMBERG  Global central banks tapped a record amount of the Chinese currency in foreign-exchange swap lines in the first quarter, in another indication of the yuan’s growing international status. The outstanding balance of all foreign currency swaps was 109 billion yuan ($15.6 billion) at the end of March, according to data released by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). That ...

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 ...