Banking

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said it was “about time” the Federal Reserve acted like a “leader” and lowered interest rates, whether such a move was related to the coronavirus-driven stock market plunge or not. “If you look at the Fed, it has a massive impact, lots of it is psychological and lots of it is fact,” Trump said at a ...

Bloomberg India’s central bank may follow up on its generous funding offer to banks with another unconventional measure as it seeks to boost lending to the real economy. The authority may unveil another European Central Bank-(ECB) styled facility called Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations to expand credit to businesses and households, after concluding an ongoing program to lend $14 billion at ...

Bloomberg For a government with a lot of debt, timing is everything when it comes to embarking on a fiscal splurge, according to research by the European Central Bank (ECB). Interest rates at the effective lower bound can enhance the impact of a public-spending shock on the economy and largely mute debt-sustainability concerns, Niccolo Battistini and Giovanni Callegari wrote in ...

Bloomberg South Africa’s rand headed for a near-four-year low, stocks entered a correction and bonds slumped as concerns about a looming credit-rating downgrade to junk compounded fears about the effect of the coronavirus on the country’s economy. The stampede away from risk assets hammered commodities from oil to copper and iron, driving the Bloomberg Commodity Index to a 33-year low ...

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc expanded restrictions on employee business travel this week as the coronavirus continued its spread around the world, according to people familiar with the matter. The bank added Italy to the list of countries off-limits to employees after restricting travel to and from Asia for the last several weeks, the people said, asking not to be named discussing ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the coronavirus “poses evolving risks” to the US economy and signalled the central bank is prepared to cut interest rates if necessary to sustain the country’s longest-ever expansion. The rare statement by Powell before the financial markets closed for the US weekend came as stocks posted their seventh-straight daily loss, a slump which ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Thailand eased some foreign-exchange rules as part of a previously announced plan to temper the baht. The threshold for proceeds that do not need to be repatriated rises to $1 million from the current $200,000, effective from March 2, the central bank said in a statement, adding that the “relaxation includes not only export proceeds but ...

Bloomberg The world economy is now on course for its weakest year since the financial crisis as the coronavirus damages demand in China and beyond, according to analysts at Bank of America Corp (BofA). Global growth will slip to 2.8% this year rather than the 3.1% previously predicted, the slowest since 2009, economists led by Ethan Harris said in a ...

Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc’s revenue will fall short this year and it will miss a key profitability target as the coronavirus outbreak and a weakened Hong Kong economy hammer the Asia-focused lender’s business. The slump in Asia, which accounts for the majority of the bank’s earnings, will contribute to 2020 revenue growth falling short of its own forecasts, according to ...

Bloomberg When Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann was asked if he gets frustrated by frequent calls for a major fiscal stimulus in Germany, he couldn’t help smiling. That’s how he reacted in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Matt Miller, on a matter where colleagues at the European Central Bank must often be on his case. Since she became the institution’s chief ...