Banking

Bloomberg China’s cash-strapped small lenders are expanding their pile of the riskiest kind of bank debt to shore up their capital levels, bracing against an economic slowdown, rising loan defaults. A total of 19 banks have sold 339.6 billion yuan ($48.5 billion) perpetual bonds, high-yielding subordinated bonds with no maturity dates this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Smaller ...

Bloomberg Currency intervention is an “essential” policy tool for Switzerland, its central bank chief said, in a riposte to the US which has the country on a watchlist for allegedly manipulating its exchange rate. “Even though we still have scope for further interest-rate cuts, the fact remains that one cannot lower interest rates indefinitely,” Swiss National Bank (SNB) President Thomas ...

Bloomberg After aggressive interest-rate reductions to shore up their economies against the havoc wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, central bankers in most sub-Saharan African countries will ask themselves whether the cutting cycle is over when they meet over the next nine days. South Africa’s monetary policy committee (MPC) may take advantage of the scope to lower its benchmark rate even ...

Bloomberg Intesa Sanpaolo SpA sweetened its takeover offer for UBI Banca SpA by adding 652 million euros ($746 million) in cash as it tries to win approval of Italian investors hit by the pandemic. The Italian bank will pay additional 57 euro cents for each UBI share tendered in the offer in addition to the share swap it announced in ...

Bloomberg Barclays Plc warned of challenges to its capital strength and souring loans at its consumer and corporate businesses as British lenders gear up to battle deteriorating economic conditions. The UK’s third-largest bank by market value said its earnings later this month will “reflect challenging income and impairment conditions for the consumer and corporate businesses, and continuing strength of markets ...

Bloomberg Former Fed Chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen warned that the US economic recovery from the coronavirus shock could be slow and uneven and said the central bank may opt to cap yields on Treasury securities to help it along. “It is possible, though not certain,” that the Fed will implement yield-curve control, they wrote on the Brookings Institution ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp.’s (BofA) profit slid 52% as it joined rivals in preparing for an onslaught of consumer defaults spurred by pandemic’s economic fallout. Profit at the consumer-banking unit plunged 98% as the coronavirus shuttered much of the US economy and caused tens of millions of Americans to lose their jobs. The company allocated $5.1 billion for loan ...

Bloomberg Bank Indonesia lowered its key interest rate for a second straight month to bolster economic growth, and signalled further easing will depend on inflation and how the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic unfolds. The central bank cut its seven-day reverse repurchase rate by 25 basis points to 4%, the lowest since the current rate system was adopted in 2016, ...

Bloomberg DNB ASA, Norway’s biggest bank, delivered second-quarter earnings that beat even the most optimistic estimates as impairments proved less dire than feared. The Oslo-based lender’s net income reached 4.77 billion kroner ($508 million) in the three months through June. Impairments fell 63% from the first quarter, DNB said. Thomas Eskildsen, an analyst at Handelsbanken, said trading and commission income ...

Bloomberg The road to recovery for the US economy will be uneven, unclear and uncertain as the coronavirus retains its hold on business and Americans’ everyday activities, according to the heads of the nation’s biggest banks. In the wake of brighter data on employment, retail sales and housing over the last two months, most financial-institution executives curbed their enthusiasm about ...