Banking

Bloomberg India’s financial regulator predicted that an improvement in banks’ bad-loan ratios will reverse, as a slowing economy hurts borrowers’ ability to repay. In its latest Financial Stability Report, the Reserve Bank of India said soured debt at Indian lenders will rise to 9.9% of total credit by September 2020, after dropping the most in 15 years to 9.3% a ...

Bloomberg The biggest US banks, including bellwethers JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc, gained as a hearty US consumer continued to signal good news for lenders. BofA rose as much as 1% to the highest since October 2008 and Citi climbed as much as 1.5% to the highest since January 2018. Other top preformers included ...

Bloomberg Benchmark sovereign bonds gained in India after the central bank said it will buy long-end debt for a second week, stepping up the pace of its unconventional policy to lower borrowing costs. The 10-year yield slid 8 basis points to 6.51% at the close, taking the week’s drop to 10 basis points. It touched a three-week low of 6.49% ...

Bloomberg China’s financial regulators are calling for more transparent and fair handling of defaults to restore investor confidence in the world’s second-largest bond market, after repayment failures hit a record high this year. Senior officials from the central bank, the securities regulatory body, the supreme court and other departments discussed court-mediated dispute resolution concerning bond defaults at a symposium in ...

Bloomberg Scandal-hit Indian lender Punjab National Bank (PNB) alleged it has been cheated — its third complaint since 2018 when it suffered through a $2 billion blow. The state-run bank filed a complaint in October alleging that Jagdish Khattar, founder of Carnation Auto India Pvt, a vehicle repair and servicing company, cheated the bank of 1.1 billion rupees ($15.4 million), ...

Bloomberg After a decade-long debt crisis that made Greece a bond-market pariah, the country now enjoys the luxury of having no financing needs for 2020. Yet the government’s 2020 budget shows it still plans to sell new debt. Despite a cash buffer of some 32 billion euros ($35.6 billion) left over from the country’s bailout programme, Greece wants to maintain ...

Bloomberg The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s operation to inject cash into the financial system over the end of the year was undersubscribed, which could indicate year-end funding pressures have eased. Primary dealers submitted $28.8 billion in bids for the 15-day term operation, which matures January 7. That was less than the $35 billion on offer. The central bank ...

Bloomberg Japan needs to remain vigilant about its banks’ overseas investments in bundled credit products because the underlying loans may be less spread out across industries or individual companies than they appear, a senior regulatory official said. ‘’Even if banks individually think they are well-diversified, it is possible that overall risks in the market are concentrated in the same sector ...

Bloomberg Special purpose acquisition companies (SPAC), once a last resort for owners looking to exit an investment, have become a popular choice for private companies spooked by the swings in the regular IPO market. This helped lead SPAC volumes to their best year yet with a range of top dealmakers from private equity firm TPG to banker Michael Klein getting ...

Bloomberg Wall Street sleuths are wondering whether the Federal Reserve is quietly doing more to calm the US repo market than just the headline-grabbing liquidity injections that have captivated observers for months. The New York Fed runs something called the foreign reverse repo pool, a place where other nations’ central banks can park cash. The amount outstanding has shrunk by ...