Banking

Bloomberg New Zealand’s central bank cut interest rates to a fresh record low and hinted at the chance of a further reduction if necessary, becoming the first among developed-world economies to ease policy this cycle. Governor Adrian Orr and his newly-formed Monetary Policy Committee decided that recent unexpected weakness in inflation and hiring warranted the Reserve Bank’s first rate cut ...

Bloomberg Banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. are set to be fined imminently by the European Union over collusion on foreign-exchange trading, according to two people with knowledge of the probe. The European Commission may announce fines as soon as this week as part of a settlement that sees the lenders get reduced penalties for agreeing not ...

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 ...