Banking

BLOOMBERG Less than a week after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell opened the door to a re-acceleration in the pace of interest-rate hikes, traders slammed it shut again amid the sudden eruption of financial strains at US regional banks. Goldman Sachs Group economists said they no longer expect the Fed to deliver a rate increase next week, even after US ...

BLOOMBERG China reappointed several top economic officials in a leadership reshuffle Sunday, giving investors greater continuity as Beijing overhauls financial regulation and grapples with escalating tensions with the US. People’s Bank of China (PBOC) Governor Yi Gang, 65, will remain in his post, as will the finance and commerce ministers. He Lifeng, a close ally of President Xi Jinping, was ...

BLOOMBERG The fallout from Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse has led to a continent-wide selloff in financial stocks erasing C$19.7 billion ($14.2 billion) in value from Canada’s top banks in the last four days. Some of the nation’s biggest lenders, including Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal and Toronto-Dominion Bank fell more than 2%. With banking equities far and away ...

BLOOMBERG President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the World Bank called on private-sector lenders to increase efforts to fight poverty across world, citing the need for trillions of dollars in lending that public institutions alone can’t meet. The World Bank needs to leverage its current balance sheet and maximize existing resources, but the total resources of development banks are in ...

BLOOMBERG Panic is spreading across the financial world as concerns about the financial stability of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) prompt prominent venture capitalists including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund to advise startups to withdraw their money. The turmoil followed a surprise announcement from Santa Clara, California-based SVB that it was issuing $2.25 billion of shares to bolster its capital position after ...

BLOOMBERG Standard Bank Group Ltd, Africa’s biggest lender by assets, is ready to re-capitalise its Ghanaian unit after making provisions to cover more than half of its holdings in the nation’s debt. “It may become necessary for us to inject capital in that business and we will, at the appropriate time,” Chief Executive Officer Sim Tshabalala said in an interview. ...

BLOOMBERG Malaysia left its monetary settings unchanged for a second straight meeting, as the central bank opted to weigh the impact of previous interest-rate increases on economic activity amid a challenging global  outlook. Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) held its overnight policy rate at 2.75%, a decision seen by 11 of 20 economists in a Bloomberg survey, with the rest expecting ...

BLOOMBERG The Bank of England (BOE) plans to cut spending on climate change work and redirect the money to core functions because of rising pressures on its costs. Climate programs will slip lower on the central bank’s agenda so officials can focus more on the core operations such as financial stability, markets and a digital currency, according to a person ...

BLOOMBERG Haruhiko Kuroda finished his last meeting at the helm of the Bank of Japan (BOJ) by buffeting markets again with a straightforward stand-pat that contrasted with the explosive launch of his massive stimulus program a decade ago. The BOJ left its negative interest rate and its cap on government debt yields untouched at the shortest regular meeting during Kuroda’s ...

BLOOMBERG Citigroup Inc Chief Financial Officer Mark Mason said his firm will adjust headcount in its investment banking division as necessary as it continues to look for ways to boost profits. For years, Citigroup has been beefing up its investment bank, including through hires in sectors like energy, biotechnology and healthcare, Mason said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Still, ...