Banking

Bloomberg As investors were expected to brace for the Federal Reserve’s policy decision on Wednesday, one corner of the foreign-exchange market looks particularly nervous. Overnight volatility for South Africa’s rand rose to as much as 25 percent, the most since August 2018, before paring the steep climb to trade at levels last seen in early May. The rand, which is ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing is considering whether to appoint a new investment banking head after ousting Garth Ritchie during his recent restructuring, people familiar with the matter said. Sewing — who had assumed direct oversight after Ritchie’s departure — thinks it may make sense to relinquish the extra responsibility to focus fully on his CEO ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc is once again defending Libra — this time against fears that the envisioned cryptocurrency could replace sovereign currencies from the US dollar to the Euro and threaten central banks’ control over money creation. David Marcus, the executive leading the project, posted a series of tweets the same day members of the Libra Association met with regulators convened ...

Bloomberg Sweden’s unemployment rate unexpectedly spiked to a four-year high in August, raising questions around the central bank’s plans to hike interest rates and driving the krona lower. The seasonally-adjusted jobless rate jumped to 7.4 percent, much worse than the 6.8 percent reading in a Bloomberg survey of economist estimates. The news, which resulted in a 0.8 percent decline in ...

Bloomberg Riksbank policy makers look intent on bringing an end to almost half a decade of negative interest rates, according to minutes from their most recent meeting. The central bank earlier this month delivered an upbeat assessment of the economy and signalled a plan to raise rates towards the end of the year or early next year. The move came ...

Bloomberg One of Europe’s most senior banking regulators is switching sides to represent the region’s biggest lenders on policy issues, drawing criticism from lawmakers and advocacy groups. Adam Farkas, currently the executive director of the European Banking Authority (EBA), will become the head of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, the industry group said in a statement. The EBA ...

Bloomberg Bank of Japan (BOJ) officials think lowering the negative interest rate, if they chose to do so in the coming months, wouldn’t backfire in financial markets because investors are aware of the possibility, according to people familiar with the matter. While most officials wouldn’t be drawn on when the BOJ might act, some of the officials see little need ...

Bloomberg Andre Esteves once joked that Banco BTG Pactual SA, the Latin American investment bank powerhouse he helped create, would one day become “better than Goldman” — a play on the firm’s name. Now, BTG is chasing Goldman Sachs Group Inc down another path, looking to build a digital retail bank for the masses. The firm, under the BTG Digital ...

Bloomberg Banks in Denmark have seen their aggregate profits sink this year, according to calculations by the industry’s main lobby group, which has repeatedly urged monetary policy makers to provide relief from long-term negative interest rates. Industry profits fell 20 percent in the first half of this year, Finans Danmark said. Denmark’s 17 biggest banks and mortgage lenders reported after-tax ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank’s (ECB) latest round of easing sent a signal to institutional investors that their inflation hedges may be growing more pointless by the day. In the northernmost corner of the euro zone, a $51 billion pension fund says ECB President Mario Draghi isn’t giving his industry much hope that things will improve. “So far, the less ...