Banking

Bloomberg The Philippine central bank cut its benchmark interest rate and will consider easing the reserve ratio for lenders next week to boost economic growth from a four-year low. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas lowered the overnight borrowing rate by 25 basis points to 4.5%, the first reduction since an operational adjustment to the rate in 2016. The Philippines joins Malaysia ...

Bloomberg Brazil held its benchmark interest rate at a record low and signaled that a period of weaker-than-expected growth is still insufficient for reduced borrowing costs. The bank’s board, led by its President Roberto Campos Neto, voted unanimously to keep the Selic rate unchanged at 6.50 percent. The monetary authority has held borrowing costs steady for roughly a year. In ...

Bloomberg Danske Bank A/S is turning into a case study for European regulators, legislators and bankers to rethink fundamental assumptions about how the finance industry should operate. First up is the principle that bank clients should be protected by secrecy laws. The sheer scale of the Danske money-laundering scandal means those rules may now get a review. The financial regulator ...

Bloomberg The Federal Reserve probably will be more inclined to cut interest rates now that President Donald Trump has followed through on his threat to increase tariffs on US imports from China. But it won’t rush into doing so. While the higher levies will put upward pressure on inflation by raising import prices, the central bank will likely be more ...

Bloomberg Tencent Holdings Ltd., Ant Financial, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and Xiaomi Corp. are among companies to win licenses to create virtual lenders in Hong Kong, bringing major players into the race to shake up the city’s traditional banking sector. Tencent has teamed up with ICBC’s local unit and Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd., according to ...

Bloomberg A bond market as old as capitalism itself has emerged as the latest proving ground for cryptocurrencies. A unit of Societe Generale SA sold 100 million euros ($112 million) of covered bonds — debt backed by mortgages — in the form of digital tokens with the French bank as the only buyer. The idea of last month’s pilot issue ...

Bloomberg Norway’s central bank said it will probably raise interest rates in June, three months after the last increase, as policy makers break with a global trend and commit to tightening. The economy of Western Europe’s biggest oil exporter is nearing full capacity as its labour market grows tighter and inflation creeps above Norges Bank’s target. But with central bankers ...

Bloomberg UniCredit SpA Chief Executive Officer Jean Pierre Mustier accelerated a long-running cleanup and bore down on costs as the Italian bank prepares to move from a strategy of recovery to growth. Italy’s biggest bank reduced operating expenses by 4.2 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier and set aside less money for bad loans. That helped the ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida pushed back against speculation in financial markets the central bank will cut interest rates to boost softening inflation up to its 2 percent target. “I don’t think we’re at that place now,” Clarida said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Michael McKee in Washington. “We think the policy in place now will get ...

Bloomberg The appointment of the next European Central Bank (ECB) head could potentially be delayed until just weeks before President Mario Draghi’s term expires amid a swathe of top European Union vacancies. That’s one of the scenarios being discussed among EU diplomats, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. The complexity of upcoming ...