Banking

Bloomberg State Bank of Vietnam orders commercial lenders to exempt, reduce or delay interest payments due January 23 to March 31 on loans to businesses facing losses from the novel coronavirus epidemic, according to a statement. The move comes as the nation’s fast-growing economy is at risk of slowing to below 6% for the first time in six years as ...

Bloomberg Mastercard Inc lowered its three-week-old forecast for quarterly revenue growth as the spreading coronavirus curbs international travel and even takes a bite out of e-commerce, a business executives had hoped would be immune. The credit-card network said it’s knocking 2 to 3 percentage points off the prediction it made on an earnings conference on call on January 29. That ...

Bloomberg Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said the monetary policy authority will be “well-prepared” to act when needed to address the impact of the coronovirus on the economy. “We will monitor the impact of the coronavirus on the economy, inflation and financial markets with maximum attention,” Kuroda told reporters in Riyadh, where he was attending a Group of ...

Bloomberg European Central Bank (ECB) policy makers from two of the euro area’s biggest economies said governments must shoulder most of the burden for rebooting economies if the coronavirus has a deeper impact on growth. France’s Francois Villeroy de Galhau and Italy’s Ignazio Visco were speaking at the Group of 20 meeting of central bankers and finance ministers in Riyadh, ...

Bloomberg Bank of Ireland Group Plc shares fell to a four-month low after profits fell, impairment charges rose more than expected and the lender’s dividend disappointed investors. Ireland’s biggest lender posted an underlying profit for 2019 of 758 million euros ($821 million), down nearly a fifth from a year ago, the company said in Dublin on Monday. The drop was ...

Bloomberg A decade-long slide in Australian interest rates is threatening to turn one of the global currency market’s most popular wagers on its head. Investors with an appetite for a little risk had a winner for years with a carry trade that saw them borrow trillions of yen at near-zero rates and use the money to buy Australian dollars. Holding ...

Bloomberg UniCredit SpA’s Jean Pierre Mustier pulled out of the race to become chief executive officer of HSBC Holdings Plc, a rejection that adds to uncertainty at the top of Europe’s largest lender and extends the search for a new boss into its seventh month. Mustier, who led a turnaround at the Milan-based bank over the last four years, plans ...

Bloomberg China’s banking regulator is considering setting up new regional bad-debt managers to help clean up risks after the failure of thousands of peer-to-peer lending platforms, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Companies in Shanghai, Zhejiang and Shenzhen have submitted applications to set up local asset managers dealing with bad loans, especially those from online lending platforms, said ...

Bloomberg China’s overall credit growth surged in January, before the extended Lunar New Year holiday due to the coronavirus outbreak curtailed economic activity across much of the country. Aggregate financing increased 5.07 trillion yuan ($723 billion) last month, the highest since the current data series started in 2017. The median estimate was 4.2 trillion yuan. The stock of outstanding aggregate ...

Bloomberg Brigita, a director at one of China’s largest car dealers, is running out of options. Her firm’s 100 outlets have been closed for about a month because of the coronavirus, cash reserves are dwindling and banks are reluctant to extend deadlines on billions of yuan in debt coming due over the next few months. There are also other creditors ...