Banking

Bloomberg The pound dropped and gilts climbed after another member of the Bank of England’s (BOE) monetary policy committee pointed to a potential vote for an interest-rate cut this month and data showed the UK economy unexpectedly shrank in November. Sterling led losses among Group-of-10 currencies, on course for its fifth consecutive day of declines. Policy maker Gertjan Vlieghe said ...

Bloomberg With a trade deal nearly signed and China’s economy on steadier footing, the path for China’s yuan to strengthen is now wide open. The currency rose to a five-month high on Monday, punching past 6.9 per dollar for the first time since August. It also strengthened for a fourth session versus a basket of trading partners’ currencies. The move ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc plans to double its headcount in China over the next five years, provided the Communist Party-ruled nation continues down the path of opening up its financial markets. The ambition to raise staffing to 600 is part of a five-year plan drawn up by executives at the New York-based investment bank, said a person familiar with ...

Bloomberg One assessment of the Hong Kong dollar’s dramatic turnaround in recent months is that it’s a sign of things to come. The moves reveal structural tightness in the city’s liquidity conditions, according to Morgan Stanley. Hong Kong banks have far less idle cash on hand, after the amount of funds on loan soared to the highest since 2002 relative ...

Bloomberg Hedge funds betting on Chinese equities surged last year, standouts in an industry that struggled to outsmart the longest-running bull market in history. A number of funds focused on mainland stocks posted double-digit returns in 2019, according to people familiar with the matter and investor letters seen by Bloomberg. Star performers included Greenwoods Asset Management’s $2.2 billion Golden China ...

Bloomberg India’s beleaguered developers see a glimmer of hope after the nation’s biggest bank announced a programme that could unclog choked funding lines to the property market. State Bank of India (SBI) said it will finance both builders and homebuyers, charging developers a premium and offering the latter a refund if their apartments are left unfinished. While Sunteck Realty Ltd ...

Bloomberg The first of Hong Kong’s new generation of digital banks has announced its arrival with a 6% introductory rate for deposits. ZA Bank Ltd, one of eight firms preparing to start digital-only banks in Hong Kong, has begun a trial run that pays a select group of depositors over 3 percentage points more than banks such as HSBC Holdings ...

Bloomberg At Danske Bank A/S, the cost of adapting to a world intensely focused on financial crime just keeps growing. In an interview in Stockholm, the chief executive of Danske in Sweden, Johanna Norberg, said “the peak” level of investment to meet anti-money laundering requirements has “not yet been reached.” The 48-year-old has been running Danske’s operations in the biggest ...

Bloomberg Expectations of global growth and particularly in emerging markets mean this year is likely to be positive for commodities but with a number of wild cards, according to Citigroup Inc. The US and China, which hold outsized sway over the world’s economic fortunes, both may have policies that skew towards higher global growth, strategists led by global head of ...

Bloomberg Should banks be forced to accept a client who could be on the wrong side of the law? A court in Finland is about to decide the answer to that question, and its verdict may have far-reaching implications. Russian billionaire Boris Rotenberg is suing four Nordic banks for not doing business with him. The oligarch, an associate of President ...