Banking

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer John Flint is pressing ahead with a plan to rein in costs after the Asia-focussed lender reported its best quarter in more than three years. The better-than-expected first quarter results were driven by revenue growth that increased at triple the pace of adjusted operating expenses, reversing a pattern that bedeviled Flint in 2018. ...

Bloomberg BNP Paribas SA reported the biggest fixed-income trading jump of all US and European banks in the first quarter, marking a rebound after recent losses and downgraded targets. Debt trading revenue unexpectedly rose 29 percent from the previous year, helped by growth in rates and foreign-exchange transactions, the French bank said. That helped BNP’s global markets unit — its ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong borrowing costs are expected to remain stubbornly high over the rest of the quarter, supporting the local currency. That’s according to Carie Li, an economist at OCBC Wing Hang Bank Ltd., who says the city’s shrinking cash pool is making banks more reluctant to lend. The one-month interbank rate, known as Hibor, has climbed to 2.07 percent, ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs has put off the German launch of its consumer bank — Marcus until next year because of the delay in Brexit proceedings as well as cost constraints, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing two people familiar with the situation. Had Brexit taken place on March 29 as it was planned earlier, Goldman Sachs would have “wanted ...

Bloomberg Two Federal Reserve officials laid out the case for a possible interest-rate cut just days after Chairman Jerome Powell said there was no reason to move in either direction. Two other US central bankers sounded more comfortable with the current policy stance. St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard and Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, both policy voters ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s government removed the governor of the central bank and the head of the tax authority amid the nation’s bailout negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. Tariq Bajwa, chief of the State Bank of Pakistan, and Federal Board of Revenue Chairman Mohammad Jehanzeb Khan were fired because of their “performance,” Firdous Ashiq Awan, a special assistant to Prime Minister ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England (BOE) signalled that it’s in no rush to raise interest rates despite stronger economic growth, as policy makers stayed united on the need to keep borrowing costs on hold for now. In an upbeat set of forecasts, Governor Mark Carney and his colleagues upgraded their expectations for growth, saying unemployment will fall further and the ...

Bloomberg India’s central bank Governor Shaktikanta Das has built up support on both sides of the political divide, making his position relatively safe under a new government no matter who wins the election. As an ex-career bureaucrat, Das has worked under administrations led by both Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Indian National Congress. He’s likely ...

Bloomberg European Central Bank policy makers who sounded the alarm about the region’s slowdown last month can now relax a bit as the stimulus they prepped becomes less urgent. It was during the first quarter that officials, led by President Mario Draghi, reactivated plans to aid growth in a moment of embarrassment so soon after concluding bond purchases last year. ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is planning to open a stock-trading brokerage in Mexico as it boosts its presence in Latin America’s second-largest economy. The move will allow the firm to buy and sell stocks locally on behalf of clients, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The new business line, still months away from being up and running, ...