Banking

Bloomberg For the Federal Reserve, 2019 has started out looking a lot like 2016: the last time uncertainty over global growth roiled financial markets for months on end. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell pointed to the 2016 episode to underscore the US central bank’s ability to be flexible when necessary, recalling the Fed held interest rates steady almost all year. But ...

Bloomberg Jim Yong Kim abruptly resigned as president of the World Bank more than three years ahead of schedule, potentially sparking an international tussle over who replaces him as the Trump administration questions the development lender’s purpose. Kristalina Georgieva, the bank’s second in command, will take over as interim president on February 1, the Washington-based bank said in a statement. ...

Bloomberg Bandhan Bank Ltd, India’s newest lender, will combine with mortgage financier Gruh Finance Ltd in a $11.7 billion deal, bringing the bank closer to meeting shareholding rules and helping it accelerate expansion. Investors in Gruh Finance, controlled by Housing Development Finance Corp, India’s biggest mortgage lender, will get 568 shares of Bandhan Bank for every 1,000 they own, according ...

Bloomberg Bank stock downgrades keep piling up as analysts caution about interest rates and credit with fourth-quarter earnings due to kick off next week. Raymond James downgraded 13 banks and lowered earnings estimates for most banks across its coverage. Analysts David Long and Michael Rose expect “abundant” downward revisions to net interest margin “with rates no longer providing such a ...

Bloomberg Nigeria is preparing rules that will allow wireless carriers to transfer cash, softening a previous policy that protected the turf of banks in Africa’s most populous country. The central bank may have realised it can’t rely on lenders alone to achieve its objective of extending services to the 50 million adults still without a bank account in the nation ...

Bloomberg Morgan Stanley just beat JPMorgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs Group Inc for a second straight year in one of Wall Street’s most competitive businesses — and it’s poised to win again in 2019. Its secret: Quirky dealmakers wielding a spigot of private money. The bank is the world’s top stock underwriter, a title that in recent years ...

Bloomberg UBS Group AG is in the early stages of planning the succession of Sergio Ermotti, one of European banking’s longest-serving chief executive officers, according to Chairman Axel Weber. Ermotti, almost eight years on the job, and Weber himself are at “a point in time where you need to start thinking about what is it that you’re going to do ...

Bloomberg Kenya’s biggest mortgage lender plans to double its home-loan business over the next two years by offering longer repayment periods, its chief executive officer said. KCB Group Ltd, which has 70 billion shillings ($685 million) in home loans and is also the country’s biggest bank by assets, wants to have 20,000 mortgages on its books by the end of ...

Bloomberg It may finally be time to load up on risky assets, Bank of America (BofA) says. The bank’s proprietary Bull & Bear Indicator, which measures investor sentiment by weighing factors like equity and bond fund flows, gave its first “buy” signal since Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016, strategists led by Michael Hartnett wrote in a note. ...

Bloomberg As a growing number of cryptocurrency ventures struggle for funding, cut staff or shut down, all is well in one small corner of the industry: lending. Creditors focussing on the crypto arena say they’re finding strong demand from borrowers who don’t want to sell their virtual coins at depressed prices, as well as from big investors eager to borrow ...