Banking

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc slashed its price forecasts for commodities from oil to copper and iron ore as it said the impact of the coronavirus looks much worse than it initially thought. Oil came in for the most severe downgrades, with the bank cutting estimates for the first three quarters. Citi also reduced its first-quarter copper projection by almost a fifth, ...

Bloomberg Competition for ownership of Indian shadow bank Altico Capital India Ltd has revived with the re-entry of Cerberus Capital Management LP into the race. New York-based hedge fund Cerberus submitted a bid for ailing Altico last week, after getting an extension from an initial deadline in the previous week, said people familiar with the matter. The creditor-run debt restructuring ...

Bloomberg Chinese policymakers prepared to shore up financial markets, which are bracing for a sell-off when trading re-starts on Monday. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and other regulators announced a slew of targeted measures over the weekend aimed at calming financial markets and helping companies, banks and individuals hurt by the viral pneumonia outbreak. The central bank will supply ...

Bloomberg Malaysia can expect half of its banking assets to be Islamic by 2030 as the industry’s growth outpaces conventional banking, according to a lenders’ association. Loans that comply with the religion’s ban on interest is set to increase by 10% to 15% annually over the next five years, outpacing the 5% to 7% growth seen for non-Islamic loans, said ...

Bloomberg State Bank of India (SBI) posted its biggest ever quarterly profit as it wrote back provisions on bad loans and recoveries improved. Net income rose to 55.8 billion rupees ($782 million) in the three months ended in December from 39.6 billion rupees a year earlier. That’s broadly in line with the 58.7 billion rupee average of analysts’ estimates compiled ...

Bloomberg Bolivia’s central bank reiterated its commitment to the nation’s currency peg and said its $6.5 billion international reserve levels are adequate, in a statement rejecting comments made by a Fitch Ratings analyst to Bloomberg News earlier this week. The nation’s foreign currency reserves “are at levels that are solid for covering internal and external payments in foreign currency under ...

Bloomberg The US central bank’s No. 2 official said it’s too early to determine whether the coronavirus outbreak in China will significantly affect the US economy, which remains in a “good place.” “It is a wild card,” said Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “We’re looking into how it translates into the outlook for ...

Bloomberg Bitcoin’s infrastructure is more centralized than ever before —raising alarms about the security and viability of what is championed as a decentralised network. Transactions on the Bitcoin network are processed by so-called miners — mostly companies operating vast arrays of computers. As competition increased, many smaller participants became unprofitable and dropped out, while the larger operations have entered into ...

Bloomberg Multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) need an urgent revamp in order to remain relevant, European Central Bank (ECB) policymaker Pablo Hernandez de Cos said. European Union officials, he said, are the best placed to undertake that rethink. “One of the biggest challenges confronting the WTO and, in general, the system of international institutions, is how ...

Bloomberg Italy’s crippling public debt is set to keep expanding amid chronically low economically growth, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said. Saddled with Europe’s largest debt burden, the country has benefited from the European Central Bank’s expansionary monetary policy and a period of relative political stability to bring down yields. But its interest costs are still higher than its economic ...