Banking

Bloomberg As banks elsewhere scrap or defer dividend payments, investors in Malaysian lenders can still expect their usual cash rewards. Malayan Banking Bhd., the biggest lender by market value, plans to keep its payout ratio of as much as 60% its profit after tax and minority interests, on top of paying a 2019 interim dividend on May 6, its spokesperson ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) cut its assessment of all the country’s regional economies in response to the damage caused to production, consumption and corporate finances by the coronavirus, with new emergency restrictions set to add to the pain. The central bank’s move to lower its views on all nine regions was the first since the global financial crisis, ...

Bloomberg The EU needs “greater action” to combat the coronavirus economic fallout, whether that’s through issuing coronabonds or other measures, ECB Governing Council member Gabriel Makhlouf said in a Business Post interview. The governor of the Central Bank of Ireland also mentioned use of the European Stability Mechanism or “something new that comes out from the European Commission” as possible ...

Bloomberg The Philippine central bank is ready to cut its policy rate to below 3% to support an economy reeling from a “once in a lifetime crisis,” according to Governor Benjamin Diokno. “It is now clear that reverting to where we were in 2018 — policy rate at 3.0% — is no longer an appropriate policy goal,” the governor said ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co will raise mortgage borrowing standards starting Tuesday, Reuters reported, citing Chief Marketing Officer for home lending businesses Amy Bonitatibus. Customers applying for a new mortgage will need a credit score of at least 700 and will be asked to pay 20% of the home’s value as a down payment, according to the report. JPMorgan & ...

Bloomberg The Federal Reserve may not be done with its all-out blitz to help the US economy survive a coronavirus-induced shutdown, even after launching an unprecedented $2.3 trillion in lending programs. The central bank used up only about 40% of the as much as $454 billion in seed capital that Congress provided it in extending help to small and mid-sized ...

Bloomberg The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has raised its stake in Housing Development Finance Corp. to just over 1%. China’s central bank held about 17.5 million shares at the end of March, according to quarterly data filed by India’s biggest mortgage lender to exchanges. It is mandatory for companies to disclose shareholding of more than 1% at the end ...

Bloomberg Europe is likely to experience a more severe recession than the rest of the world, but growth should start in the second half of the year, the European Central Bank’s vice president said. A genuine recovery might take until 2021, but the first signs of growth should be visible starting in the third quarter of the year, Luis de ...

Bloomberg The UK government’s overdraft extension at the Bank of England (BOE) shows that the coronavirus pandemic will be so costly that even the country’s leadership is worrying about how to finance it. As the UK unleashes the biggest fiscal stimulus in decades, the concern is that its borrowing strains the ability of debt markets to soak it up, pushing ...

Bloomberg Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp., (OCBC) Southeast Asia’s second-largest bank, has joined some global peers in pledging it won’t lay off staff due to the coronavirus pandemic. “We do not plan to have retrenchment exercise arising from this outbreak,” Chief Executive Officer Samuel Tsien said in a recent memo to employees. Despite the expected hit to the bank’s revenue growth, Singapore-based ...