Banking

Bloomberg Scratch below the surface of the euro area’s dismal economic numbers and there’s a glimmer of hope that things could improve. While inflation remains in hibernation and factories are seeing orders drop, companies are continuing to hire and consumers are spending more from their rising wages. That’s why European Central Bank officials are showing reluctance to race into action ...

Bloomberg German economic growth is likely to remain subdued at least through the first half of the year as deteriorating business expectations threaten to hamper company investment — yet there’s no reason for concern, according to the Bundesbank. “There are no signs that the slowdown is morphing into a downturn,” the country’s central bank said in its monthly report. Some ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said that the US dollar is too strong, and took a swipe at Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell as someone who “likes raising interest rates.” The US economy is doing well in spite of the actions of the central bank, Trump said during a wide-ranging speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. ...

Bloomberg The debt-trading malaise that hurt US lenders last quarter has extended north of the border, though Royal Bank of Canada’s equities traders helped soften the blow. The lender saw a 12 percent drop in trading revenue from fixed income, currencies and commodities in the three months through January, advancing the trend that affected US banks including JPMorgan Chase & ...

Bloomberg Tunisia’s central bank warned over the deteriorating state of the country’s finances and called for additional efforts to curb inflation after the first hike in interest rates since June. The current-account deficit reached an “unprecedented” 11.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2018, according to Governor Marouane El Abassi. The decision to raise the benchmark by 100 basis points ...

Bloomberg Indonesia’s central bank left its benchmark interest rate unchanged, dropping some of its more hawkish comments of the past as the Federal Reserve’s policy pause helped to ease pressure on emerging markets. The seven-day reverse repurchase rate was left at 6 percent for a third month, as predicted by all 33 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Bank Indonesia hiked six ...

Bloomberg The gatekeepers of mainstream commerce are keeping their doors shut to cryptocurrency companies. Entrepreneurs in the digital-assets industry from New York to Hong Kong say that even as some attract investment from multibillion-dollar institutions like Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, they are routinely refused basic banking services by the likes of HSBC Holdings Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. While ...

Bloomberg Barclays Plc has emerged as the go-to bank for the world’s largest meat supplier after scandals at the company pushed Wall Street to the sidelines. JBS SA and its subsidiaries have sold at least four overseas bond deals totaling $2.75 billion since 2017, when the Brazilian powerhouse’s owners became embroiled in allegations of corruption. Barclays underwrote all of them. ...

Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. boosted an estimate for potential legal losses by $500 million while disclosing that it’s in early talks to resolve another round of probes into sales abuses at its branches. The company said it might have to spend as much as $2.7 billion more than what it set aside by the end of December to resolve ...

Bloomberg Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. agreed to buy DZ Bank’s aviation finance division in one of its biggest acquisitions since it was created in 2005. The assets MUFG bought from Germany’s second-largest bank, held by its subsidiary DVB Bank, include a loan portfolio of 5.6 billion euros ($6.4 billion) as well as the unit’s employees and “parts of the ...