Banking

Bloomberg Financial markets have gotten used to the Federal Reserve adjusting its benchmark interest rate in small increments. They might want to be ready for a change. While no move is expected as officials gather this week, economists and investors generally agree the Fed is going to cut rates this year. The last two times the Fed began an easing ...

Bloomberg Mario Draghi nudged the European Central Bank (ECB) closer to pumping more monetary stimulus into the economy, highlighting that “lingering” risks are strengthening the case for action. The ECB president said at the institution’s annual forum in Sintra, Portugal, that “additional stimulus will be required” if the economic outlook doesn’t improve. He said the commitment to keeping interest rates ...

Bloomberg Malaysia’s large banks have the highest board representation for women across the Southeast Asian region, outpacing peers in Singapore and the Philippines where the proportion is below 15 percent. Women make up more than 30 percent of the boards of top Malaysian lenders, compared with only 9 percent on average in the Philippines, and 13 percent in Singapore, according ...

Bloomberg Australia’s central bank is likely to lower interest rates again to drive increased hiring. The central bank aims to boost households’ confidence that inflation will return to target. The Reserve Bank made the comment in minutes of its June 4 policy meeting, when it eased the cash rate to 1.25 percent in the first reduction in almost three years. ...

Bloomberg Bank Indonesia sees room to cut interest rates, according to Governor Perry Warjiyo, raising the prospect of Southeast Asia’s biggest economy easing monetary policy in the face of growing risks to growth. “If we take into account low inflation and economic growth that needs to be pushed, indeed, we already know that there’s room to lower interest rate,” Warjiyo ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG is considering exiting US equities trading and creating a “bad bank” to wind down legacy assets as part of a broader overhaul to be announced next month, according to a person familiar with the matter. The bank’s supervisory board discussed options on a call last week, the person said, asking not to be identified in disclosing ...

Bloomberg Executive Board member Benoit Coeure said the European Central Bank will act if needed to support the economy and could even be facing such a decision within months. In a Financial Times interview, Coeure said most of the economic concerns relate to manufacturing, and may be temporary, but that signals coming from financial markets are “quite alarming.” The comments ...

Bloomberg Just as India’s banks emerge from under a pile of bad loans to large energy, steel and other industrial companies, they are facing a new reckoning from the accelerating crisis in the country’s shadow banking sector. A year after a series of defaults by Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. forced the government to intervene and exposed weaknesses in ...

Bloomberg The two biggest Nordic banks have both recently beefed up their compliance units significantly. Both say the extra headcount is temporary. Nordea Bank Abp has hundreds of employees who scrutinise billions of transactions in order to catch anything that looks potentially criminal. It’s a costly, inefficient system that Mikael Bjertrup, head of the bank’s financial crime prevention unit, plans ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is finally embracing its status as a private equity giant. The firm’s top executives in recent months have laid out plans to raise more client funds for private investing and rely less on its own balance sheet. As part of that effort, the bank is looking to consolidate the investing activities of multiple units across ...