Banking

Bloomberg UK households continued to amass savings and pay down debt in May as stores remained closed for a second month in an effort to the stop the spread of coronavirus. The build-up of money in bank accounts reflects both the reduced opportunities to spend and the fact that the wages of millions of furloughed workers are being paid by ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Korea (BOK) said unemployment and other economic fallout from the pandemic will accelerate already existing declines in South Korea’s potential growth rate. Higher jobless rates, more people dropping out of the workforce, and a delayed recovery in corporate investment will exacerbate a downward trend that started before the coronavirus, the bank said in a report. Slowing ...

Bloomberg An incessant steepening in Japan’s yield curve is raising the stakes for the central bank’s monthly bond-buying plan. Faced with mounting losses on their portfolios, investors are looking to the Bank of Japan to boost purchases of super-long debt to ease the pressure. The spread between 10-year and 30-year yields widened for a third month in June in the ...

Bloomberg Work from home may remain part of the norm for many in India’s financial industry beyond the end of the world’s biggest lockdown. The reason: elimination of lengthy commutes in the past three months has boosted employee productivity. Take Jefferies’ India team for example. On average, its 60 members have managed to save over an hour every day on ...

Bloomberg Zimbabwe has sufficient foreign currency reserves to sustain the reintroduced foreign currency auction system, the state-run Sunday Mail reported, citing central bank Governor John Mangudya. Mangudya said local lenders have almost $1 billion in their foreign currency accounts. “It’s about sufficient resources utilisation of resources,” Mangudya was quoted as saying in the newspaper. The country reintroduced the foreign currency ...

Bloomberg Germany’s state-owned development bank KfW is facing potential losses of 100 million euros ($112 million) after payment company Wirecard AG filed for insolvency. KfW’s subsidiary Ipex Bank granted the scandal-hit company a 100 million-euro credit line in September 2018. The financing was extended last year and has been fully drawn down, a spokesman for Ipex told Bloomber. There are ...

Bloomberg The biggest Nordic banks have voiced concerns over how Denmark’s debt office is handling sales of its shortest-dated securities. The debt office in Copenhagen, which is part of the central bank, recently added commercial paper to the list of securities it sells. But bankers at Danske and Nordea, among others, say the office has left them in the dark ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Russia cut interest rates by the most in five years and signaled another reduction is likely to help stimulate an economy heading toward a deep recession. The benchmark interest rate was cut 100 basis points to 4.5%, the lowest level since inflation-targeting began in late 2014, the central bank said in a statement. Policy makers warned ...

Bloomberg Zimbabwe’s central bank plans to stop providing the foreign currency needed for fuel imports, handing the responsibility to private companies, reports said. The plan, which will end an effective subsidy, will take place as early as June 23 when a currency peg is removed and an auction system for foreign exchange is set to begin, the people said, asking ...

Bloomberg Two Philippine lenders said they didn’t hold cash on behalf of Wirecard AG, the German payments processor whose shares have tumbled after it said it was unable to locate more than $2 billion in funds. A document purporting to show a link between Wirecard and the Bank of the Philippine Islands was “bogus” and may be part of an ...