Banking

Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank’s (SNB) holdings of US stocks touched a record $92.7 billion in the second quarter, benefiting from a rise in equity markets. The SNB’s US regulatory filing is one of the few glimpses into its vast investment portfolio, amassed as a consequence of its interventions to weaken the franc. It revealed stakes in 2,554 US companies, ...

Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. is getting into the burgeoning esports market, joining a funding round for Matcherino Inc., a provider of software and services for running competitive video-gaming tournaments. Wells Fargo Strategic Capital and technology investment firm Galaxy Digital are putting in $1.5mn for an undisclosed percentage of Matcherino, bringing the startup’s current funding round to more than $4.1mn, ...

Bloomberg India’s central bank is poised to deliver its fourth successive quarter-point interest rate cut on Wednesday, amid calls from investors and the government for further easing as a slowdown gripping the economy becomes more pervasive. The Reserve Bank of India will lower the benchmark repurchase rate by 25 basis points to 5.5%, according to almost all of the 36 ...

Bloomberg South Africa’s biggest financial union is threatening to disrupt the country’s banking industry by leading its 73,000 members on a strike next month, in what would be its largest industrial action in almost a century. The planned two-day walkout will target lenders that have consulted staff over job cuts in recent months and other institutions that employ members of ...

Bloomberg Italy’s state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti SpA has given its backing to a 1.5 billion-euro ($1.7 billion) plan to consolidate the country’s construction sector after clearing a last-minute hurdle over the role of Natixis SA. After two board meetings and overnight talks, Italy’s biggest construction company Salini Impregilo SpA and Cassa Depositi have signed an investment deal that ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England (BOE) for the first time is asking British insurers to gauge how global warming might impact the value of the stocks and bonds they hold — and its potential to upend financial markets. The central bank, which regulates the UK financial services industry, included three scenarios related to climate change in a broader stress test ...

Bloomberg Australia’s central bank (RBA) chief Philip Lowe is leaving open the door to further interest-rate cuts in order to prevent a wave of global easing from neutralizing his back-to-back reductions and boosting the currency. The Reserve Bank is set to keep the cash rate at a record-low 1% on Tuesday, traders and economists predict, following June and July’s cuts. ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc abruptly ousted its chief executive officer after just 18 months, citing an “increasingly complex” environment, and announced a new round of job cuts. The exit of John Flint, a 51-year-old who started at HSBC as a trainee, highlights tension with Chairman Mark Tucker, known to be a hard-charging executive who was the first outsider to fill ...

Bloomberg Romania prolonged more than a year of steady interest rates, looking past the European Union’s fastest inflation as the world’s major economies pivot towards looser monetary policy. Following the first cut in US borrowing costs since the financial crisis, the National Bank of Romania left its benchmark rate unchanged at 2.5% on Monday, as predicted by economists in a ...

Bloomberg Philippine central bank Governor Benjamin Diokno said he expects to cut interest rates by another 50 basis points this year, with the timing dependent on economic data. “Until the end of the year, it’s around 50 basis points,” Diokno said on Monday, when asked if he was open to lowering borrowing costs further. “If we do 50 basis points, ...