Banking

Bloomberg South Africa’s banking regulator plans to give banks a break from accounting and capital rules that could release around 300 billion rand ($17 billion) for lending to help the economy cope with the fallout of the coronavirus. “It’s quite big, it’s quite meaningful,” said Kuben Naidoo, deputy governor of the South African Reserve Bank and chief executive officer of ...

Bloomberg New Zealand’s central bank needs to step up the scale and pace of its quantitative easing (QE) to achieve a meaningful fall in interest rates, market participants say. Since beginning purchases last week, the Reserve Bank has bought NZ$1.4 billion of government bonds at four auctions. While yields have moved lower, the market is wary that an expected NZ$17 ...

Bloomberg Officials from leading Southeast Asian central banks have agreed to coordinate efforts to boost their economies, all struggling under the blow from the coronavirus pandemic. Bank Indonesia Governor Perry Warjiyo told reporters in an online briefing that he held talks a day earlier with officials from five central banks in the region. He didn’t give details of what kind ...

Bloomberg Singapore’s central bank said lenders will offer additional relief for consumers and companies battered by the sharp economic slowdown, including a freeze on mortgage and business loan payments and cuts to credit card rates. Banks and finance companies can defer both principal and interest payments on residential mortgages through December 31, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said in ...

Bloomberg Rand Merchant Bank (RAB) urged South African lenders and other finance firms to adopt a more coordinated approach with the government to the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus outbreak. While South Africa’s banks have made a constructive effort to cushion customers from the impact so far, a much broader response is needed, James Formby, the chief executive officer of ...

Bloomberg The British banking regulator pressed firms including HSBC Holdings Plc to scrap dividends and cash payouts for its top staff as the coronavirus pandemic upends the industry. HSBC and Standard Chartered Plc shares tumbled after they and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Barclays Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc canceled outstanding dividends and buybacks and said there would ...

Bloomberg European banks are likely to see 120 billion euros ($131 billion) in potential profit disappear over the next three years as the spreading coronavirus upends clients and economies, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Goldman Sachs analysts led by Jernej Omahen shredded their profit forecasts for the sector through 2023 by 27%, four times the 30-billion euro hit to ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s alternative-investments division is seeking to raise as much as $10 billion in an effort to bolster its spending power as the Covid-19 pandemic roils global markets. “The magnitude of these dislocations is so significant,” Anton Pil, the global head of alternatives for JPMorgan’s asset-management arm, said in an interview. “And to get some of these ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank (ECB) will explore all possible options to support the economy in the current phase of acute difficulty, Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco said in a speech. “As part of our mandate, we are willing to increase the volume of purchases, to change their composition,” said Visco, who is also a European Central Bank Governing ...

Bloomberg As the number of countries going into lockdowns to fight the coronavirus pandemic increases, emerging markets may institute capital controls, according to Citigroup Inc. “There’s a decent case to make that we might be approaching a world in which policy makers start to restrict the movement of capital in just the same way that they are restricting the movement ...