Banking

Bloomberg The Taiwan dollar strengthened past 30 versus the greenback for the first time in 18 months. The currency rose as much as 0.6% to 29.965 per dollar on and closed at 30.106 in Taipei. The Taiwan dollar has climbed about 3.4% in the second half as the best performer among the world’s major currencies. Taiwan’s financial markets were expected ...

Bloomberg China’s central bank said it’ll keep monetary policy flexible and work to lower funding costs for businesses as the economy still faces strong headwinds. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will work to ensure the transmission of monetary policy and use market-focused reform mechanisms to lower the real interest rate for loans, according to a quarterly report. It will ...

Bloomberg The battered euro is finishing the year strongly and setting up the case for better performance next year. The common currency rose to its strongest level versus the dollar since August and cross-currency basis swaps — a measure of demand for funding purposes — climbed to the highest on record, Bloomberg Generic Prices show. While both moves mirrored a ...

Bloomberg China’s central bank will increase the supply of cheap funding to banks by cutting the amount of cash they need to hold as reserves, a move aimed at putting a floor under economic growth in 2020. The required reserve ratio for commercial lenders will be lowered by 50 basis points from Jan. 6, unleashing about 800 billion yuan ($115 ...

Bloomberg Grab Holdings Inc is partnering with Singapore Telecommunications Ltd to apply for a full digital banking license, jumping aboard a Singapore government initiative to attract technology firms into its financial sector. A Grab entity will own a 60% stake in the consortium that will apply for the bank license in Singapore, while the telco known as Singtel will hold ...

Bloomberg European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde is attempting an endeavour possibly as daunting as reigniting inflation in the euro area: Learning German. It’s understandable that the region’s new monetary chief, an internationally minded Frenchwoman now based at the ECB’s headquarters in Frankfurt, might want to communicate in the first language of her latest home. Not only is German ...

Bloomberg The Taiwan dollar has erased gains with remarkable regularity in afternoon trading over the past weeks, but the predictable moves remain off-limits to traders. The local currency rose as much as 0.6% on Monday before ending the session up 0.2% at 30.135 versus the greenback. Recent late-session paring had spurred speculation that the central bank is taking a more ...

Bloomberg Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA sold about 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) of troubled loans, reaching its goal for reducing risk two years early. About 1.6 billion euros of unsecured non-performing loans were sold to Illimity Bank SpA, Monte Paschi said in a statement on Monday. Separately, it sold 0.2 billion euros of unlikely to pay loans, ...

Bloomberg Lime Asset Management Co, the firm at the centre of a scandal that sparked unprecedented withdrawals from South Korean hedge funds, now faces an investigation into its investment in a troubled US fund. A senior official at the Financial Supervisory Service said South Korea’s top financial watchdog will ask prosecutors to probe Lime’s investment in funds run by International ...

Bloomberg China’s local government financing vehicles are seen as the top investment among the nation’s corporate bonds next year as state backing limits the risk of default, a survey showed. Local governments’ financing vehicles, which now have 8.4 trillion yuan ($1.2 trillion) outstanding, have long had a shadow over them because many lack sustainable revenues to make debt payments, and ...