Banking

Goldman planning to double China headcount in five years

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 ...

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It’s going to get wilder for HK dollar traders

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 ...

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Hedge funds betting on China surged ahead in 2019

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 ...

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Lifeline from India’s biggest bank gives beaten builders hope

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 ...

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HK’s first digital bank offers 6% rate that dwarfs HSBC’s

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 ...

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Danske’s cost burden keeps growing in an age of bank scandals

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 ...

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Citi sees better year for commodities

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 ...

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Russian billionaire sues Nordic banks

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 ...

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UK economic data slew greets BOE officials debating rate cut

Bloomberg Bank of England (BOE) policy makers considering whether the UK needs further stimulus will get a deluge of data in the coming week. The economy is back under the microscope after outgoing Governor Mark Carney last week said officials are debating the merits of action and have plenty of room to act if necessary. A day later, Silvana Tenreyro ...

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China will ramp up infra spending in 2020: JPMorgan

Bloomberg China’s fiscal stimulus is shifting back to a focus on infrastructure investment, away from the approach of cutting taxes for businesses the government favored in previous years, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. “We expect no major further tax cuts in 2020, though the effect of tax cuts will linger into this year,” JPMorgan economists including Zhu ...

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