Banking

Bloomberg African central banks have joined the global wave of emergency meetings and unusual measures to cushion their economies against the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. While many of the central banks in the region target inflation and have to prop up volatile currencies, they’ve also used non-traditional policy tools in addition to aggressively cutting interest rates to salvage economic ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) set itself up to buy more bonds in the key 5-to-10 year maturities, showing an intent to maintain yield-curve control amid growing expectations of further debt-fueled stimulus from the government. The central bank offered to buy 350 billion yen ($3.2 billion) of the tenor on Monday, the same as the previous regular operation. That’s ...

Bloomberg The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) cut the amount of cash that some banks have to put aside as reserves, injecting liquidity to encourage lending as the world’s second-largest economy is set for the slowest growth since 1976. The required reserve ratio (RRR) for rural banks and small city commercial banks will be lowered 1 percentage point, the PBOC ...

Bloomberg The Federal Reserve has further dialed back the pace at which it plans to buy Treasuries under its unlimited quantitative easing program. The US central bank, which has been aggressively purchasing Treasuries in a bid to offset the economic and market fallout from the coronavirus pandemic said that it would dial back the daily pace of buying to $50 ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to buy out its local partner to get full control of a Chinese mutual fund joint venture, taking advantage of the latest move by Beijing to open up the nation’s asset management and securities businesses to foreign firms. The US bank is buying a 49% stake held by Shanghai International Trust Co. to take ...

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc. made more than $100 million trading a huge swath of the highest-rated collateralised loan obligations as market turmoil prompted asset managers in need of liquidity to unload securities at steep discounts. Citigroup bought roughly $2 billion of AAA rated CLO bonds in late March at around 90 cents on the dollar from PGIM, the investment management business ...

Bloomberg Half a million of Bank of America Corp.’s (BofA) 66 million customers have deferred loan payments because of financial fallout from the coronavirus. “The idea is to defer the payment, defer the impact,” Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said in an interview on CNBC. “We’re working with our customers who need help, who are losing their jobs. We have ...

Bloomberg Euro-area governments are ramping up their bond sales, but there are few signs of investor fatigue with the European Central Bank (ECB) increasing its purchases. Yields from Germany to Italy climbed after debt management offices sold more than 40 billion euros ($43 billion) of bonds, the most in seven years, according to Commerzbank AG. However, investors have stepped up ...

Bloomberg The bad-asset bank created when a group of Russia’s biggest private lenders collapsed sees the twin shocks of plunging oil prices and global economic pain wrought by the coronavirus pandemic as a chance to expand. “There’s every reason to believe that the amount of problem assets in 2020 will grow significantly,” Bank Trust Chief Executive Officer Mikhail Khabarov said ...

Bloomberg Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, lost a record $113 billion in the first quarter after the economic shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic triggered a sell-off in global stock markets. The loss comes at an historic moment for the fund, as it may soon need to liquidate assets for the first time to cover Norway’s emergency spending ...