Banking

Bloomberg The Bank of England (BOE) doesn’t have to wait until all political uncertainty around Brexit is resolved to raise interest rates, according to policy maker Michael Saunders. The economy will probably move to “significant excess demand” over the next two to three years if Brexit goes smoothly, Saunders said, and will need monetary tightening as a result. Consumer spending ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank (ECB) is willing to cut interest rates, resume bond purchases or strengthen its promises to keep borrowing costs low if necessary to battle economic weakness, policy maker Olli Rehn said. “The Governing Council is determined to act and stands ready to adjust all of its instruments, as appropriate,” Rehn, who heads Finland’s central bank, said ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) can deliver bigger monetary stimulus if necessary, but needs to take care with its side effects on the financial system, said Governor Haruhiko Kuroda. The BOJ will ease further if momentum towards its 2 percent inflation target is lost, Kuroda said in an interview with Bloomberg TV’s Kathleen Hays in Fukuoka, Japan, where central ...

Bloomberg A marked slowdown in Asia’s third-largest economy pushed growth concerns to the top of the Reserve Bank of India’s agenda, suggesting more policy easing will follow its third interest-rate cut of the year. Governor Shaktikanta Das and the inflation-targeting RBI he leads is now squarely focussed on boosting investment and consumption after quarterly growth cooled to a five-year low ...

Bloomberg People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang said that no specific level for the yuan is important, and indicated confidence it will continue to be “relatively strong” once the noise of the trade war subsides. “There is obviously a link between the trade war and the movements of renminbi,” Yi said in an exclusive interview in Beijing, using the ...

Bloomberg Chile’s central bank stunned analysts by cutting its key interest rate by 50 basis points, the biggest reduction in a decade, saying the economy could grow faster without fuelling inflation. Policy makers reduced the benchmark rate to 2.5 percent, surprising all 18 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The analysts had expected borrowing costs to be left unchanged. The bank is ...

Bloomberg Fears are mounting at the European Central Bank (ECB) that investors are losing faith in the inflation outlook, in a self-reinforcing spiral that could force the institution to dig deeper into its stimulus toolkit. Staff at the euro zone’s national central banks are worried that inflation expectations are becoming “deanchored,” according to officials familiar with the matter. They cited ...

Bloomberg The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) eased rules to give lenders laden with bad debt more time to resolve delinquent accounts and lifted a deadline for pushing defaulters into bankruptcy courts. The directive, which also covers shadow banks, gives lenders 30 days to review a delinquent account and a further 180 days to implement a resolution plan, loosening the ...

Bloomberg Retail banks have been slower to embrace blockchain technology and face greater challenges in reaping its potential benefits than their more adventurous co-unterparts in investment-banking world, according to new research from McKinsey & Co. Headwinds for retail lenders to adopt a shared system of distributed computer ledgers to manage day-to-day activities include a tougher regulatory environment for consumer finance ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) will lower its short-term interest rate to -0.3 percent from -0.1 percent in September to head off risks posed by an expected Federal Reserve rate cut, JPMorgan Chase & Co. said in a research note. Fed cuts are now expected in September and December after escalating US-China trade tensions have raised the risk that ...