Bloomberg Rising defaults have prompted India to tighten oversight of corporate bond sales, causing issuance to slump in a blow to a long-sought goal of expanding the market. Offerings of rupee notes have fallen to 43.8 billion rupees ($584 million) this month, the slowest start to a financial year since 2008. That’s due in part to rules that took effect ...
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Bank of England joins global peers exploring a digital currency
Bloomberg Britain’s Treasury and the Bank of England are weighing the potential creation of a central bank digital currency, joining authorities from China to Sweden exploring the next big step in the future of money. The government and central bank on Monday announced the creation of a task force to coordinate on the possibility of BOE-issued digital money for use ...
Read More »Banks face growing pressure to phase out fossil-fuel lending
Bloomberg Investors managing $11 trillion have called on the world’s biggest banks to phase out financing of fossil-fuel companies and throw their weight behind the goals of the Paris climate agreement. Asset managers, including Federated Hermes Inc.’s EOS division and Pacific Investment Management Co., have asked 27 banks to commit to eliminating emissions across their operations by 2050, including those ...
Read More »Angola begins sale of state bank
Bloomberg Angola began selling state-run lender Banco de Comercio e Industria to test investor appetite for some of the country’s biggest companies including oil giant Sonangol, said Economic Coordination Minister Manuel Nunes Junior. The sale of the nation’s 13th-largest bank by assets is part of a push by Africa’s second-biggest oil producer to raise cash and jump-start a moribund economy. ...
Read More »Big banks rake in record profits as stimulus props up consumers
Bloomberg The US government piled trillions of dollars of emergency funds into Americans’ accounts during the pandemic. That’s boosting the bottom lines of the banks that store their cash. Lending giants reported blockbuster profits this week, in part because stimulus payments have helped consumers bounce back from the Covid-19 crisis and prevented more severe economic damage. The emergency funds helped ...
Read More »Morgan Stanley’s record quarter stained by Archegos collapse
Bloomberg Morgan Stanley surprised investors with a $911 million loss tied to the collapse of Archegos Capital Management, staining what was otherwise a record quarter for revenue and profit. “The current quarter includes a loss of $644 million related to a credit event for a single prime brokerage client, and $267 million of subsequent trading losses through the end of ...
Read More »Bank of Thailand unfazed by US currency watchlist inclusion
Bloomberg The Bank of Thailand has responded to the US decision to keep the nation on watch for currency manipulation by asserting it has stepped into the market only to curb volatility in the baht. The central bank is committed to exchange-rate flexibility, with “interventions limited only to curbing excessive volatility and rapid movements of the baht on both sides,†...
Read More »Credit Suisse sued over Greensill Capital, Archegos
Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG was sued by a small pension fund that alleges the bank misled investors and let “high-risk clients†including Greensill Capital and Archegos Capital Management take on too much leverage, in one of the first lawsuits since the twin debacles. The Michigan pension fund, City of St. Clair Shores Police & Fire Retirement System, filed the ...
Read More »UBS is victim of own success in bid to cut $4.4bn fine
Bloomberg A ruling slashing a record French fine against a bank seemed to bode well for UBS Group AG as it fights an even larger 3.7 billion-euro ($4.4 billion) penalty in front of the same judges. But the Swiss lender might be a victim of its own success. According to details of the April 6 decision only revealed earlier this ...
Read More »SNB says its ready for forex intervention
Bloomberg Switzerland’s central bank said it will continue with its policy of foreign-exchange interventions while seeking dialog with the US after the Biden administration dropped the country from its list of currency manipulators. The Treasury Department said that although the Swiss fulfilled the criteria for the manipulator label, there was “insufficient evidence†of the country trying to gain an unfair ...
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