Banking

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 ...

Bloomberg South Korea’s central bank left its key interest rate unchanged as the outlook for Asia’s fourth-largest economy weakens amid falling exports, soft jobs growth and waning inflation. The Bank of Korea kept the seven-day repurchase rate at 1.75 percent, as forecast by all 26 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Most economists expect the BOK to leave borrowing costs where they ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. is considering setting up a private bank in China as new regulations give foreign firms a better chance to compete with local players in the world’s second-biggest pool of wealthy people. The New York-based bank is doing a “feasibility study” on China’s onshore wealth business as part of broader plans to expand in the nation, ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said a healthy US economy has faced some “crosscurrents and conflicting signals” that officials in January decided warranted taking a patient approach to future interest-rate changes. With inflation pressures “muted,” the Federal Open Market Committee in its decision last month to keep interest rates unchanged “determined that the cumulative effects’’ of its actions and ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet agreed to extend Jens Weidmann’s term as head of the Bundesbank by another eight years from May as he waits to see if he is picked later this year for the top job at the European Central Bank. The decision, which needs formal approval from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was taken at a meeting on ...