Banking

Polish rate hawk sets sights on single hike

Bloomberg The most hawkish member of Poland’s Monetary Policy Council said a single interest-rate increase is needed to ward off the rising threat of inflation. Central banker Kamil Zube-lewicz said that such tightening wouldn’t harm economy but ev-en he holds out little hope that the 10-member policy panel — which has kept the benchmark unchanged for seven years — will ...

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China’s first bank seizure since 1998 shows hidden loan risk

Bloomberg China’s first government takeover of a bank in more than two decades has underscored the potential for increased stress at regional le- nders that piled into off-book financing in recent years. Regulators said that they would assume control of Ba-oshang Bank Co. for one year because of “serious” credit risks. The Inner Mongolia-based lender, once seen as a model ...

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5 banks face lawsuit over Australia foreign exchange scandal

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co are among five banks named in a class action lawsuit in Australia seeking damages for colluding on foreign-exchange trading strategies. UBS Group AG and Barclays Plc were also named in the suit lodged on Monday in the Federal Court by Maurice Blackburn Lawyers. The action claims ...

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Negative rates push small Japan banks into structured finance

Bloomberg Japan’s regional banks have long been relegated to the sidelines in one of the most lucrative corners of the lending market while regular loans got gradually less profitable. Now some are fighting back. Shizuoka Bank Ltd has lined up a network of 40 local lenders that will invest in structured assets such as project finance and non-recourse real estate ...

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Deutsche Bank signals investment unit cutbacks

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing is targeting the investment bank for “tough cutbacks,” notably in equity trading, in a campaign to restore market confidence following the breakdown of takeover talks with Commerzbank AG. “I can assure you: we are prepared to make tough cutbacks” to the securities unit, Sewing said at the bank’s annual shareholders’ meeting ...

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Mario Draghi has 10 days to gauge recovery for ECB stimulus decision

Bloomberg European Central Bank officials are approaching a major decision on new stimulus amid conflicting economic data and differences over what to do about it. Economists at the ECB are preparing forecasts for President Mario Draghi to unveil next week that will show whether they still believe an upturn will materialise in the second half of the year. The Governing ...

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Canadian banks struggle to see growth in domestic operations

Bloomberg Canadian banking is no longer the engine driving profit growth at the country’s large lenders. With Canadian financial giants including Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank having announced results this week, and rivals to follow, it’s becoming clear that businesses such as wealth management and US operations are doing more to increase earnings than their mainstay of domestic ...

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HSBC hit as Brexit Britain’s consumer casualty list grows

Bloomberg The past months have been brutal for the UK’s retail and consumer industries, and one bank that’s felt its fair share of the pain is HSBC Holdings Plc, which has found itself on the wrong side of several of the highest-profile failures. Last week, TV celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s casual-dining chain was placed into protection from creditors. That left ...

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ECB contenders for Draghi’s job brace for initial EU skirmish

Bloomberg European Union leaders are about to begin their tussle over who should run the region’s monetary policy in the era after Mario Draghi. Heads of government will sit down for dinner in Brussels, in the aftermath of EU parliamentary elections, to kick off talks on the next suite of top political appointments. Among them is arguably the bloc’s most-powerful ...

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Fed staff lose faith on hitting 2% inflation goal

Bloomberg The Federal Reserve’s influential staff seems to have lost confidence that its bosses will achieve the central bank’s 2 percent target, if the minutes of the Fed’s meeting are anything to go by. The staff forecast presented to policy makers saw inflation falling shy of 2 percent“over the medium term’’ even as the job market was projected to tighten ...

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