Banking

Bloomberg UniCredit SpA ended one its most significant legal disputes by settling a US probe over sanctions violations, clearing the path for the lender to focus on growing its business after years of cleaning up legacy issues. The bank agreed to pay $1.3 billion to settle US charges for violating sanctions against Iran that have been hanging over UniCredit since ...

Bloomberg UBS Group AG topped the list of the 20 largest wealth firms in Asia for the sixth consecutive year even as assets under management declined in the region, Asian Private Banker said. While the Zurich-based bank continued to dominate the regional top spot by a wide margin, with assets totaling $357 billion last year, Credit Suisse Group AG slightly ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co and Barclays became the latest financial institutions to lower their estimates for Brazil’s economic growth this year, on the back of weak activity data and increased political uncertainty. They joined Itau Unibanco SA, Latin America’s largest bank by market value, which remains the most pessimistic of the three after cutting its 2019 growth forecast for ...

Bloomberg China’s central bank shifted its tone on the economy, emphasising that it will control excessive money supply amid signs of a recovery. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said it’ll keep good control of the money supply “floodgate” and not “flood” the economy with excessive liquidity, according to a statement. That wording had been dropped from the previous quarter’s ...

Bloomberg It began as an inquest into what went wrong. Now the Federal Reserve’s policy rethink may be widening to include the part the central bank thought it had gotten right. Inflation keeps falling short of the Fed’s target, and that was the trigger for what’s supposed to be a months-long review of strategy. Now, policy makers are being drawn ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump, renewing his attack on the Federal Reserve, claimed the stock market would be “5000 to 10,000” points higher had it not been for the actions of the US central bank. “If the Federal Reserve had done its job properly, which it has not, the Stock Market would have been up 5000 to 10,000 additional points,” the ...

Bloomberg Germany’s economic growth picked up only moderately in the first quarter and the underlying pace of expansion remains subdued on the back of an industrial downturn, according to the Bundesbank. Orders in manufacturing have “literally collapsed” and the mood has “significantly deteriorated” in the industry that used to be the motor of export-heavy economy, the German central bank said ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank’s (ECB) negative interest-rate policy has been effective at stimulating the economy and there isn’t a need at this stage to mitigate the profit squeeze it’s caused commercial banks, according to Governing Council member Vitas Vasiliauskas. “I think it’s still a positive tool and at this stage, today, I don’t think that there is a need ...

Bloomberg A combination of low liquidity and high complacency mean cross-asset volatility won’t stay at historic lows for much longer, according to Morgan Stanley. “There are still two things that argue against the current levels of volatility being correct or sustainable,” cross-asset strategist Andrew Sheets said in an interview. “The first is that market liquidity is still not great. The ...

Bloomberg Egypt plans to sell a stake in Banque du Caire, one of the country’s biggest state-owned lenders, towards the end of this year, central bank Governor Tarek Amer said. “The size is around 20 percent; might go up to 30 percent,” Amer said in an interview in Washington, where he attended the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual ...