Banking

Bloomberg New Zealand’s central bank expanded its quantitative easing program and said it’s open to cutting interest rates into negative territory as a new coronavirus outbreak threatens the economic recovery. The Reserve Bank increased its Large Scale Asset Purchase program to as much as NZ$100 billion from NZ$60 billion, and extended it until June 2022, according to a statement on ...

Bloomberg ABN Amro Bank NV will cut its investment bank by about a third and shut down lending outside of Europe as the Dutch bank tries to turn around business hit hard by the market chaos caused by the coronavirus crisis. ABN Amro will stop providing corporate finance outside Europe and exit trade and commodity financing altogether, the Dutch bank ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs strategists raised their profit estimates for S&P 500 after a record number of companies beat analyst expectations. Strategists at the bank led by David Kostin lifted their 2020 EPS estimates to $130 from $115, expecting an overall 21% profit contraction versus last year’s levels. The second-quarter results also re-affirmed the team’s confidence in their 2021 EPS estimate ...

Bloomberg The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) monetary policy review has come and gone but it’s done little to calm traders’ nerves over an unprecedented government bond supply. Their patience is running thin as the RBI refrained from taking steps to ease the market’s debt burden at a policy review last week, even as the government plans to sell 12 ...

Bloomberg Barclays Plc is being investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office, a privacy watchdog, on allegations it spied on its workers through a computer monitoring software, the Telegraph reported. A spokesman from the Information Commissioner’s Office confirmed the probe to the paper, but couldn’t say when it will conclude. The Telegraph said Barclays faces a maximum fine of 865 million ...

Bloomberg Banks operating in Hong Kong are stepping up scrutiny of their customers and at least one US bank is moving to suspend accounts to avoid running afoul of US sanctions slapped on city officials, putting them at risk of violating the controversial security law imposed by China. Asking not to be named discussing clients, people familiar with the decision ...

Bloomberg A benchmark tracking shares of British banks closed at the lowest level since December 1992 after the Bank of England left investors concerned that interest rates may drop further, hurting earnings for the sector. The FTSE 350 Banks Index falls 1.8% amid a broader market drop as central bank officials indicated rates could fall below zero after the coronavirus ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategists said that while the dollar does face further downside, it isn’t caught in the kind of structural decline suggested by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts last week. “We continue to push back on the idea of a much broader, secular downtrend in the dollar predicated on structural factors,” JPMorgan currency strategists Daniel Hui, Paul ...

Bloomberg The largest underwriter in the $3.9 trillion municipal-bond market says the rally is about to face a crucial hurdle. Bank of America Corp. (BofA) analysts Yingchen Li and Ian Rogow said they’re watching to see what happens if 10-year benchmark yields hit 0.5% — a threshold that may mark a test of whether investors continue stampeding into the market. ...

Bloomberg Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.’s (OCBC) profit fell more than analysts anticipated in the second quarter as it joined its Singapore peers in setting aside higher provisions for loan losses during pandemic. Net income dropped 40% from a year earlier to $533 million in the three months ended June 30, Southeast Asia’s second-largest bank by assets said. That missed the S$930 ...