Banking

BLOOMBERG Dutch bank ING is suing China’s largest bank for losses sustained in a batch of copper deals and seeking $170 million in damages, the Financial Times (FT) reported. ING alleged Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) breached contract terms because it released export documents for copper transactions without collecting payment, the paper said, citing a Hong Kong court filing. ...

BLOOMBERG Norway and Sweden are no longer the place to go for currency investors hunting richer returns in Europe. The Nordic nations’ comparatively high interest rates and slow inflation made them a carry-trade favourite in quiet times when demand for riskier wagers was strong. Investors borrowed in low-rate currencies like the euro and Swiss franc and used the money to ...

BLOOMBERG  Morgan Stanley’s investment bank and its giant wealth unit surpassed analysts’ expectations in the first quarter even as profits fell from a year earlier, dragged down by a dropoff in deal-making and a jump in loan-loss provisions. Net income slid 20% from a year earlier to $2.84 billion amid a slowdown in the trading and banking businesses. The firm’s ...

BLOOMBERG  Goldman Sachs Group Inc has been hit by additional departures in its Asia equities team, with key exits in Tokyo and Hong Kong to rival banks and hedge funds. Among those that left recently are managing directors Fredrik Grunberger in Hong Kong and Tomiyuki Oji and David Williams in Tokyo, according to people familiar with the matter. Oji is ...

BLOOMBERG  Hungary’s central bank unexpectedly signalled its first potential step towards cutting the European Union’s highest key interest rate, with policymakers pointing to an outlook of rapidly slowing inflation. The forint dropped against the euro. Deputy Governor Barnabas Virag caught investors by surprise after months of pushing back against government pressure to lower the 18% key interest rate to aid ...

BLOOMBERG Christine Lagarde warned that changes in the world economy induced by geopolitics pose a challenge to the European Central Bank (ECB) and its peers. “We are witnessing a fragmentation of the global economy into competing blocs, with each bloc trying to pull as much of the rest of the world closer to its respective strategic interests and shared values,” ...

BLOOMBERG Bank of America Corp (BofA) first-quarter profit beat estimates after its fixed-income traders delivered a windfall large enough to cover the rising cost of the bank’s souring loans. Revenue from fixed-income, currencies and commodities trading unexpectedly rose almost 30% to $3.4 billion in the first quarter, as clients reacted to changing interest rates, the bank said. That helped the ...

BLOOMBERG Bank of England (BOE) Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said regulators may need to impose a limit on using so-called stablecoins for payments as policy makers try to balance the need for innovation with its accompanying concerns. Cunliffe raised the prospect that rapid innovation in payment systems could bring new risks for customers and financial markets as a whole. “While, ...

BLOOMBERG Credit Suisse Group AG saw clients pull $4.4 billion from US and European funds since the lender agreed to be acquired by rival UBS Group AG in March, with recent inflows suggesting the worst of the bleeding may be over. Credit Suisse’s European funds suffered $3.8 billion in net redemptions between March 20 and April 6, while US funds ...

BLOOMBERG  The European Central Bank (ECB) is set to deliver three quarter-point increases in interest rates in May, June and July before ending the most aggressive bout of monetary tightening in its history, economists polled by Bloomberg say. That would take the deposit rate to 3.75%, where it would stay through the rest of the year, according to the April ...