Banking

Bloomberg Landlocked Laos may be a net beneficiary of the trade tension between the US and China. Chinese foreign-direct investment has climbed since the trade war began as firms seek alternative manufacturing sites to avoid US tariffs, said Bank of the Lao PDR deputy governor Vathana Dalaloy. “We may gain more than we lose,” she said in an interview in ...

Bloomberg India’s rupee is the only emerging Asian currency to weaken this quarter and its losses may gather pace as a report this week is forecast to show economic growth slid to a six-year low. The rupee, which has slumped almost 5% from this year’s high in July, is also under selling pressure due to escalating levels of public debt ...

Bloomberg India’s surprise seizure of a troubled Indian shadow bank won’t end the woes of its lenders, faced with the risk of heavy writeoffs if Dewan Housing Finance Corp is declared a fraudulent account. That’s because the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) requires banks to provision fully for their entire exposure over four quarters if they decide a loan account ...

Bloomberg The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) board plans to vote on Mexico’s request to renew its flexible credit line (FCC), possibly for less than the current $74 billion, before it expires next week. Mexico is interested in reducing the size now that there’s greater certainty around its trade relationship with the US, Alejandro Werner, the IMF’s Western Hemisphere director, said ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank’s (ECB) chief economist Philip Lane said policies are “in good shape” for the baseline scenario of improving conditions over the next one or two years, but further rate cuts can’t be ruled out. “Under the most likely scenario, we think the current policies are in good shape,” he said in an interview broadcast on Italy’s ...

Bloomberg A former JPMorgan Chase & Co banker was convicted of conspiring with traders at other banks to rig bids and fix prices in currency markets — a victory for prosecutors in their campaign against collusion in foreign exchange. Akshay Aiyer was found guilty by a federal jury in New York that took less than four hours to reach a ...

Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank (SNB) has additional room to cut its already negative interest rate, the central bank’s Chief Economist Carlos Lenz told Swiss Sunday newspaper NZZ am Sonntag in an interview. “It’s not ruled out, but they cannot fall indefinitely,” Lenz said when asked if interest rates could decline further. “What’s crucial: cash has an interest rate of ...

Bloomberg Judy Shelton, one of President Donald Trump’s most recent picks for the Federal Reserve board, challenged an article of faith regarding the US central bank in private comments to a bank executive last month: that it should operate free of political influence. Shelton shared her views on monetary policy and the Fed with Beat Siegenthaler, global macro adviser for ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank accused a pair of offshore funds of failing to follow through on a deal to sell the German lender $1.6 billion in claims against Bernard Madoff’s bankrupt investment advisory business. Kingate Global Fund Ltd and Kingate Euro Fund Ltd, which funnelled client money to Madoff’s firm for years before his Ponzi scheme collapsed in 2008, have “sellers’ ...

Bloomberg Mexico’s central bank called for the preservation of its independence amid economist concerns that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador may encroach on its independence, as he has with other autonomous institutions. One by one, the four heads of Banco de Mexico over the past three-and-a-half decades took the podium to praise the benefits of autonomy and the importance of ...