Banking

Bloomberg Hungary’s central bank left its main interest rates unchanged, sticking to a gradual shift towards the end of ultra-loose monetary policy as it assesses the need to curb brewing inflation pressures. Rate setters left the rate on required reserves unchanged at 0.9 percent and the overnight deposit rate at minus 0.15 percent on Tuesday, with both decisions matching economists’ ...

Bloomberg Zimbabwe said it will allow companies and individuals to transfer dollars electronically, as it looks to ease a crippling scarcity of foreign exchange that’s sent the economy into meltdown and triggered protests. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has upgraded its systems to allow for such transactions and will run testing until February 1, after which it plans to go ...

Bloomberg Volatile times are back on the global economic scene with the US appearing to lack clear policy and growth in Europe slowing, the Kenyan central bank governor said. Comments by members of the US government have undermined the Federal Reserve’s role as an anchor of monetary policy, Governor Patrick Njoroge said. Other key concerns include the threat of a ...

Bloomberg Absa Group Ltd Chief Executive Officer Maria Ramos will step down after overseeing the split from Barclays Plc, an alliance blamed for the loss of retail market share at South Africa’s third-largest bank. The stock rallied the most among its Johannesburg-based peers on Tuesday in the wake of her pending exit. Absa, once the nation’s largest mortgage lender, fell ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank’s (ECB) pessimism over its economic outlook might not last long even if the euro area fails to pick up speed — instead it’ll just revise the projections to reflect the heightened risks. Governing Council members Francois Villeroy de Galhau and Vitas Vasiliauskas said that policy makers expect to cut their 2019 growth prediction in March ...

Bloomberg The European economy doesn’t show any signs of falling into a recession, ECB Governing Council member Klaas Knot said. “The European economy is doing pretty well,” and even though capacity utilisation is high and unemployment low, this isn’t leading to inflation, the Dutch central bank president said in Dutch television show Buitenhof. “I do find talk about a crisis, ...

Bloomberg Chinese regulators have allowed S&P Global Ratings’ Beijing-based wholly owned unit to conduct credit rating business on the mainland, according to a statement from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). The credit assessor is now allowed to register for bond rating service in China’s interbank market. The PBOC didn’t mention Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings in its announcement ...

Bloomberg Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said tough oversight of bankers and threats of jail aren’t enough to prevent talent from joining the industry. Carney was discussing the UK’s Senior Managers’ Regime, a response to the “relatively limited consequences” for senior bankers in the wake of the financial crisis. It works on the basis that ignorance is no defense, ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has some further explaining to do after the central bank’s monetary messages whipsawed financial markets over the last month. Powell holds a press conference at 2:30 pm on Wednesday in Washington following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. Investors expect the FOMC to keep interest rates on hold. Its policy statement ...

Bloomberg First came a sweeping government crackdown and a surge in defaults and failures at thousands of China’s peer-to-peer lenders. Now, in another troubling sign for the industry, some of the biggest investment banks have stopped taking them public. Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Citigroup Inc walked away from US initial public offerings of Chinese P2P ...