Banking

Bloomberg American Express Co has high hopes for 2020, predicting earnings that surpassed many analysts’ expectations and prospects for “more rational” competition from its biggest rivals. After sweetening the bonuses on some of its most popular products, including the Green card, AmEx said overall rewards costs climbed 8% to $2.72 billion during the fourth quarter. That was less than the ...

Bloomberg Nigeria turned the screws even tighter on lenders by increasing the amount of money they need to park with the central bank for the first time in almost four years in an effort to tame inflation. The West African nation’s central bank raised the cash-reserve requirement for lenders to 27.5% of total deposits, from 22.5%, to curtail excess liquidity ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG and a Singapore based hedge fund bought more debt of an embattled Indian shadow lender, highlighting the growing foreign interest in the discounted assets of the financier at the center of a credit crisis. Deutsche Bank has almost doubled the debt it holds of Altico Capital India Ltd to 3 billion rupees ($42.1 million) in the ...

Bloomberg A rift among the global elite over the future of digital payments was on display during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. At stake is the potential overhaul of the global financial system that could see companies like Facebook Inc pitted against the world’s central banks in the race to develop a ...

Bloomberg A Swiss bank’s former chief executive officer has been sanctioned by the country’s financial regulator for insider trading in his wife’s name and what Finma called other “serious breaches of supervisory law.” The man executed the trades using his wife’s account at other lenders for several years, violating his bank’s internal directives, Finma said. The identities of the bank ...

Bloomberg Some of the world’s major central banks are teaming up to assess potentially developing their own digital currencies, acknowledging that their role is being challenged by new technologies and private sector initiatives such as Facebook Inc’s Libra. A group has been formed in order to “share experience as they assess the potential cases for central bank digital currency (CBDC) ...

Bloomberg Bank of England (BOE) governor Mark Carney warned of mounting risks to the financial sector and the economy from climate change, and urged the US to play bigger role. “Something which was largely on the periphery of finance has come into the mainstream,” Carney told Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Bloomberg Climate Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Transition risk ...

Bloomberg Malaysia’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate in a surprise move on Wednesday, the first in Southeast Asia to do so this year as it seeks to support its economy amid lingering global uncertainty. Bank Negara Malaysia reduced the overnight policy rate to 2.75%, a 25 basis-point cut predicted by just two of the 26 economists surveyed by ...

Bloomberg UBS Group AG Chairman Axel Weber said his top priority for the next months is working to reduce a $5 billion French tax fine that’s prompted the bank to postpone a decision on future share buybacks until the second half of the year. The Swiss lender was slapped with the fine after a Paris court found it guilty of ...

Bloomberg Ukraine is stepping up plans to slash Europe’s highest benchmark borrowing costs. Inflation has plummeted to the lowest in almost six years after the hryvnia outshone all other currencies against the dollar in 2019. The more benign backdrop will be reflected in this month’s quarterly projections for interest rates, according to the central bank. “This forecast will be more ...