Banking

  Bloomberg Chinese banks are touting a wide variety of retail lending products as authorities need a pickup in consumer spending to create a more solid foundation for the world’s second largest economy. Lenders including Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp. are offering preferential interest rates and incentives such as gift cards on e-commerce platforms to lure ...

  Bloomberg Nomura Holdings will give its employees in Japan bigger pay raises starting in April, citing intensifying competition for talent and faster inflation. Employees excluding executives will get a slightly larger raise than the roughly 3% average of the past few years, Japan’s largest brokerage said in a statement on Tuesday. A growing number of Japanese firms have signalled ...

  Bloomberg Japan stepped into the foreign exchange market three times in total last year, according to a fuller picture of the government’s latest intervention strategy to counter the yen’s historic fall. The Ministry of Finance conducted currency interventions on October 21 and 24, according to the daily operational report for the quarter ended December released by the ministry on ...

  Bloomberg Morgan Stanley has appointed two senior investment bankers in Singapore to new roles as it beefs up its Southeast Asia franchise. Ronald Ong has been named chairman of Southeast Asia, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg News. David Aronovitch becomes chief executive officer of the region, overseeing businesses including investment banking, the memo shows. A spokesperson for ...

  Bloomberg Ghana plans to convert an estimated 40 billion cedis ($3.3 billion) of loans owed to its central bank into bonds, making it the single biggest holder of domestic government securities and exposing it to an ongoing debt restructuring, according to people familiar with the matter. The bonds, due to be issued by the finance ministry, will also cover ...

  Bloomberg As the dust settles on the wave of ESG fund downgrades that swept through Europe’s investment industry, BNP Paribas SA has managed to climb several notches up a controversial ladder. BNP Paribas Asset Management (AM) is now the second-biggest provider of the European Union’s top environmental, social and governance (ESG) fund class, known as Article 9. Its decision ...

  Bloomberg Australia’s central bank (RBA) is all but certain to increase interest rates at its first meeting of the year, with some observers pointing to the risk of a resumption of outsized moves to counter a surprising surge in inflation. Most economists and traders see the Reserve Bank lifting its cash rate by a quarter-point on Tuesday to 3.35%, ...

Bloomberg The Hong Kong dollar is rapidly heading toward the weak end of its trading band against the greenback as traders sell the currency to buy higher-yielding US assets. The local exchange rate is one of the worst performers worldwide in the past two months with a 0.74% drop against the US dollar, and last traded at HK$7.8473. Depreciating past ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank (ECB) should actively fight inflation until people feel price stability in their everyday lives, according to Governing Council member Robert Holzmann. “The risk of over-tightening seems dwarfed by the risk of doing too little,” Holzmann told a conference Monday in Budapest. “Monetary policy must continue to show its teeth until we see a credible convergence ...

  Bloomberg All it took was a strong US jobs report to expose the fragility of last week’s bond rally in Europe. Within minutes of the print, German bonds had erased almost half of their day-before rally, which had been turbocharged by expectations central banks were nearing an end to their hiking cycles. Jubilation is giving way to fresh anxiety ...