Bloomberg A proposal by the Swedish central bank intended to address liquidity shortages in the country’s corporate bond market has been met with disbelief by a number of asset managers. The Riksbank last week repeated its call to improve the market’s functioning but added a new demand: revise the regulatory framework so corporate bond funds “cannot offer daily redemptions,†according ...
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Digital bank upstarts are years away from profits in Hong Kong
Bloomberg Hong Kong’s virtual banks are facing years of red ink on the bottom line after making limited inroads against their brick-and-mortar rivals in the financial hub. The two leading digital banks so far, Mox Bank Ltd, backed by Standard Chartered, and ZA Bank Ltd, bankrolled by China’s ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance, predict they will start breaking even by 2024 ...
Read More »Credit Suisse cuts risk as defections mount in wake of scandals
Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG is grappling with how to keep top bankers from fleeing to competitors and drastically reducing risk as new Chairman Antonio Horta-Osorio seeks to recover from a series of scandals. The lender is cutting ties with SoftBank Group Corp, a backer to Lex Greensill’s collapsed supply-chain finance empire, and it’s temporarily barring clients from withdrawing all ...
Read More »Fed admonishes Deutsche Bank for ongoing compliance failures
Bloomberg The Federal Reserve has privately told Deutsche Bank AG that its compliance programs aren’t up to snuff, signalling that the scandal-plagued bank is failing to adhere to a number of past accords with US regulators. The Fed’s recent warning came in an annual regulatory assessment that said Deutsche Bank hadn’t improved its risk management practices despite being under confidential ...
Read More »Kuroda: BOJ to mull climate in monetary policy discussions
Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) will consider climate change in its monetary policy discussions, Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said in his clearest signal yet that the central bank is looking to support the battle against global warming. “We have a great interest†in climate change and its impact on the economy and the financial system, Kuroda said in an interview ...
Read More »SNB’s Jordan says inflation risk is moderate
Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank’s (SNB) monetary policy is appropriate given there’s no great risk of spiralling inflation, its President Thomas Jordan said in an interview with Schweiz am Wochenende (SamW). “We think the risk of inflation is moderate in Switzerland,†he told the newspaper in an interview. “The strong currency acts as a damper on inflation, the franc is ...
Read More »China eases offshore funding limit for foreign banks
Bloomberg China’s central bank raised the limit on how much smaller lenders and foreign banks operating in the country can borrow offshore, a move that will ease a funding shortfall and give a push to expansion plans for firms such as HSBC Holdings. Their ability to borrow outside of China was expanded this week after the People’s Bank of China ...
Read More »ECB doves sour euro rally with pushback against tapering bets
Bloomberg The euro’s charge towards a three-year high is stumbling as the European Central Bank quashes expectations that it’s anywhere near paring back emergency stimulus. The ECB is increasingly expected by economists and investors to extend its elevated pace of emergency bond-buying at a June meeting, even as the continent’s vaccination program surges forward and economy rebounds. That’s putting a ...
Read More »Canada’s biggest banks signal Covid all-clear earlier than expected
Bloomberg Canada’s biggest banks are signaling that financial issues from the Covid-19 crisis are largely in the rear-view mirror in North America — and earlier than analysts had expected. After a year of stockpiling record amounts of capital to protect against a wave of loan defaults, Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank — the country’s two largest banks — ...
Read More »Sweden wants Riksbank to identify climate threats
Bloomberg The Swedish central bank will by law have to identify threats against sustainable development and consider issues such as employment when it conducts policy, according to a government proposal. Climate change could become a long term threat “to economic development broadly, as well as stability in the financial system,†according to the proposal for a new Riksbank Act, which ...
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