Banking

Bloomberg The World Bank cut its forecast for Ethiopia’s economic growth in the 2020 fiscal year to 6.3%, well below the government’s projection. The National Bank of Ethiopia has forecast that gross domestic product growth would accelerate to 10.8% for the fiscal year ending in July, up from a 9% pace in fiscal 2019 as the government implements a blueprint ...

Bloomberg American Express Co cleared a key hurdle in its bid to accessing China’s $27 trillion payments market after the central bank accepted its application to start a bank card clearing business. The People Bank of China made the announcement on its official Wechat account, without giving more details. The decision to accept the application signals that it’s moving closer ...

Bloomberg The popular Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card is about to get more expensive. JPMorgan Chase & Co is boosting the annual fee for customers to $550 from $450 as it adds new perks with partners such as DoorDash and Lyft Inc, according to bank spokeswoman Ashley Dodd. For new cardholders, the increased annual fee will go into effect on ...

Bloomberg South Africa’s ruling African National Congress reaffirmed the central bank’s role, mandate and independence in an annual policy statement. The assurance may allay fears of renewed attacks by some ANC leaders on the South African Reserve Bank in the run-up to the party’s national general council later this year. The gathering will mark the mid-point of the current ANC ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell likened the potential fallout surrounding the central bank’s interest-rate forecasts to a nuclear meltdown in what even he admitted was a stretched metaphor back in 2014. “The market doesn’t really understand how the SEP works and how it gets put together,” the then-Fed governor said in March 2014, referring to the central bank’s quarterly ...

Bloomberg South Korea’s biggest arranger of offshore bond sales expects another busy year in 2020 due to a big wall of maturing debt and foreign investor demand at a time of rising uncertainties elsewhere. Korean issuers sold $33.3 billion of notes abroad last year, only slightly below the six-year high marked in 2018, Bloomberg-compiled data show. Issuance in 2020 will ...

Bloomberg Outgoing Bank of England (BOE) governor Mark Carney said central banks globally are getting close to running out of tools should they need to tackle another serious economic downturn. “It’s generally true that there’s much less ammunition for all the major central banks than they previously had, and I’m of the opinion that this situation will persist for some ...

Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG appointed managing director Jonathon Kaufman as the head of its new global infrastructure, utility and renewables group. “Infrastructure was the fastest-growing asset class in 2019, raising over $90 billion, and continues to be of strategic importance,” investment-banking chief David Miller, and Malcolm Price, who oversees the new group as well as financial sponsors and leveraged ...

Bloomberg Tencent Holdings Ltd and China UnionPay Co will soon unify the mobile codes that consumers scan to pay for purchases, granting the Chinese central bank-backed network a bigger foothold in a $27 trillion payments arena. Tencent and UnionPay have agreed to integrate their QR code systems, allowing their respective customers to transfer or spend money using the same smartphone ...

Bloomberg A group of Barclays Plc shareholders have filed what they say is the first climate change resolution at a European bank, taking aim at the lender’s support of fossil fuels. Eleven institutional investors and more than 100 individuals urged Barclays to say how it will phase out financing energy firms that don’t align with the Paris Agreement climate goals, ...