Banking

Bloomberg The African Development Bank (AfDB) said it issued the world’s biggest social bond yet by selling $3 billion of notes to fight the impact of the coronavirus on the continent. Africa’s biggest multilateral lender received $4.6 billion in bids for its Fight Covid-19 social bond, it said in a statement. More than half of bids for the three-year bond, ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. (BofA) said it won’t cut any jobs this year as a result of the coronavirus, and is helping clients affected by the pandemic through increased commercial lending to companies and expanded forbearance for Main Street customers. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender has hired 2,000 people this month and is shifting more than 3,000 employees to ...

Bloomberg Morgan Stanley won US antitrust approval for its $13 billion acquisition of discount brokerage E*Trade Financial Corp., according to a person familiar with the matter. The Justice Department’s antitrust division has signed off on the takeover without requiring any changes, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the decision hasn’t been made public. A Morgan Stanley ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Canada announced a large scale asset purchase program and cut its benchmark interest rate to a record low in a bid to ease financial-market strain and shield the nation’s economy from coronavirus fallout. The central bank lowered its policy rate last week by another half a percentage point to 0.25%, adding in a statement that the ...

Bloomberg Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) cut its prime rate by 50 basis points (bps), matching Bank of Canada’s latest emergency rate cut. Canada’s largest lender by assets reduced the key rate to 2.45% from 2.95%, the Toronto-based bank said in a statement. Canada’s central bank unexpectedly cut its overnight lending rate by another half a percentage point to 0.25% ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank (ECB) will scrap limits on bond purchases for its 750 billion-euro ($819 billion) emergency program in a landmark decision that gives it almost unlimited firepower to fight the economic fallout from the coronavirus (Covid-19). Government bonds rallied across the euro area after the ECB released a legal document that said the so-called issue limits, which ...

Bloomberg The UK’s coronavirus lockdown should trigger a recovery in the pound, which has fallen to its most undervalued ever against the dollar, according to Standard Chartered Plc. The government’s aggressive actions should enable a quick restoration of economic activity once the health situation improves, wrote strategists including Geoff Kendrick in a note. At the same time, the potential near-term ...

Bloomberg India’s central bank should directly start monetising the government’s fiscal deficit in efforts to fight one of its worst economic crisis, said Ananth Narayan, former South Asia head of financial markets at Standard Chartered Plc. “In a war, we have to borrow from our future,” said Narayan, now a professor at Mumbai-based SP Jain Institute of Management & Research. ...

Bloomberg Policy makers trying to prevent credit markets from freezing up have a huge challenge on their hands with regional banks. Such firms should be best positioned to keep money flowing to community businesses like restaurants, travel agencies and gyms on the brink of failure because of the coronavirus pandemic. But regional banks themselves are increasingly at risk, riven by ...

Bloomberg Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) is using the coronavirus pandemic to seize a large portfolio of assets at rock-bottom prices, a New York real estate investment trust (REIT) claims. In a suit in federal court in Manhattan, a subsidiary of AG Mortgage Investment Trust Inc. said it received March 23 margin calls from Canada’s largest lender. According to the ...