Banking

Bloomberg The West African Economic and Monetary Union has agreed with France to a number of changes to the CFA franc currency, including a new name, Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara said, as the West African bloc inches closer to a split from the French-backed currency. The monetary union will keep its euro peg while moving its currency reserve from ...

Bloomberg Traders at HSBC Holdings Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co are among those who accessed a high-speed audio feed of Bank of England press conferences, according to the Financial Times, which cited an unidentified person. HSBC and JPMorgan declined to comment to Bloomberg News. Investment banks across the City are trying to establish whether their traders used the feed, ...

Bloomberg The former head of HSBC Holdings Plc’s North American interest rates business was sued for fraud by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Christophe Rivoire helped manipulate the price of an interest rate swap between the bank and a bond issuer, the CFTC said in a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court. The agency claimed the issuer had ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp, which tops the league table for US leveraged-loan issuance, is watching that market closely for signs of stress. “The real concern is: Is there too much leverage in the system in certain companies, and if they have trouble, will that impact the economy?” Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “We ...

Bloomberg China’s central bank injected the most liquidity via open-market operations since January, in a push to ensure ample cash supply ahead of seasonal tightness at year-end. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) added 280 billion yuan ($40 billion) into the financial system with 7 and 14-day reverse repurchase agreements , while keeping the interest rates unchanged. That came after ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England (BOE) signalled it will focus on the next phase of Brexit negotiations as two policy makers continued to push for an immediate interest-rate cut. Officials said it was too early to tell whether the clearer path for the UK’s departure from European Union (EU) on the back of Boris Johnson’s election win will improve sentiment. ...

Bloomberg Germany will join European peers like France and Poland next year in selling green bonds, tapping rising demand and favourable issuance costs for such debt as it boosts investments to cut carbon pollution. Europe’s benchmark issuer will sell about 10 billion euros of the bonds from mid-year via auctions, “twinning” emissions with regular bonds of the same maturity and ...

Bloomberg With European banking mergers at their lowest on record — and profits slumping — politicians are finally getting more serious about the need for consolidation. German finance minister Olaf Scholz is seeking to persuade European colleagues of the need for a banking union. He called publicly last month for a deposit insurance system that works across the region, a ...

Bloomberg China’s government-bond investors will soon be looking for reassurance from the central bank that there’s plenty of cash in the financial system. The country will see a “liquidity hole” of 2.8 trillion yuan ($400 billion) in January, in large part because people across the nation will withdraw cash for the Lunar New Year holiday, according to Guotai Junan Securities ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank’s (ECB) Single Supervisory Mechanism will likely lift the ceiling on Greek banks’ holdings of the country’s sovereign bonds, people familiar with the situation said. The supervisory ceiling set in 2015 is expected to be lifted in February, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing ongoing deliberations. European and national authorities warned ...