Banking

Bloomberg Societe Generale SA failed to halt the slide in its investment bank in a quarter where the key equities business and stronger capital levels were bright spots for Chief Executive Officer Frederic Oudea. Profit at the unit that houses the trading operations declined 16 percent in what’s usually its strongest period. While earnings were dragged down by fixed-income trading, ...

Bloomberg The Federal Reserve escalated its warnings about the perils of risky borrowing by businesses, saying firms with the worst credit profiles are the ones taking on more and more debt. The Fed also left a question unanswered: Is it going to do anything about it? The US central bank’s latest financial stability report said leveraged-lending issuance grew 20 percent ...

Bloomberg More US consumers are defaulting on their credit cards, but banks may be holding onto the riskiest loans instead of passing them off to investors, according to a report from Barclays Plc. The credit card loans that banks bundle into bonds and sell to investors are outperforming the loans that lenders have held onto, Barclays analyst Alin Florea wrote ...

Bloomberg Singapore is discussing the possibility of allowing virtual banks to operate in the city state, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said on Tuesday. “MAS is studying whether to admit such digital-only banks with non-bank parentage,” the financial regulator said in an emailed reply to questions from Bloomberg News. “We have been engaging relevant stakeholders to ascertain the unique value ...

Bloomberg UBS Group AG is beefing up the ranks of senior executives at its securities joint venture in China after taking majority control late last year, hiring five managing directors for the investment banking business, said a person with knowledge of the matter. Shen Dehua, most recently investment banking head of HSBC Holdings Plc’s Qianhai securities venture, joined UBS Securities ...

Bloomberg Australian central bank chief Philip Lowe kept his head below the parapet by keeping interest rates unchanged less than two weeks out from an election, saying lower unemployment is needed to drive faster inflation. Lowe left the cash rate at 1.5 percent — where it has stood since he took the helm in September 2016 — after economists and ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank’s (ECB) outgoing chief economist has some parting words for his colleagues on the Governing Council: be careful when planning your future strategy. Peter Praet, whose term ends this month, dived into the debate over whether the ECB needs to revisit its interpretation of price stability, which it sees as keeping inflation just under 2 percent. ...

Bloomberg China’s banking regulator has told the nation’s major lenders to accelerate recognition of nonperforming loans, as officials seek to bolster the quality of lending, according to people familiar with the matter. The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission in recent weeks used so-called window guidance to inform banks with nationwide operations that they must classify corporate loans overdue for ...

Bloomberg For the first time since Philip Lowe took the helm of Australia’s central bank in September 2016 there’s a real chance he may cut interest rates, making him the first in the developed world to do so this cycle. Economists and markets are both split on whether the Reserve Bank will cut at Tuesday’s meeting, with the highest odds ...

Bloomberg Troubles among India’s non-bank financiers will persist for at least a year even if the danger of a full-blown financial crisis has passed, according to the head of the nation’s most valuable bank. Tighter regulatory oversight and asset sales have staved off the worst of the problems afflicting India’s non-bank financial firms following last year’s defaults by Infrastructure Leasing ...