Banking

Bloomberg BMO Capital Markets’ metals and mining division faced upheaval this year after losing its two veteran co-heads during an already tough time for the resource industry. Its new leaders aim to prove the investment bank remains as strong as ever in the sector. The Bank of Montreal unit is accelerating lending and adding more bankers, including a sales-and-trading team ...

Bloomberg Donald Trump says he likes winning. Right now, it’s difficult to count up anything but losers if the president fires Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Trump has been discussing whether he can dismiss Powell, Bloomberg News reported, pro-mpting Treasury Secretary Ste-ven Mnuchin to tweet that the president said he doesn’t believe he has the authority to do so. Trump ...

Bloomberg Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called top executives from the six largest US banks over the weekend, he said on Twitter, a move that followed heavy losses in the stock market last week and a partial federal government shutdown. “The CEOs confirmed that they have ample liquidity available for lending to consumer, business markets, and all other market operations,” the ...

Bloomberg When it comes to reversing their crisis-era bond buying, central bankers are focussed on the destination. Traders in risk assets care more about what could be a painful journey. The contrasting views upset markets this week. Chairman Jerome Powell reiterated the notion that the Federal Reserve would remain on auto pilot when trimming its $4 trill- ion portfolio, and ...

Bloomberg Investors pulled money out of US loan funds at a record pace, withdrawing $3.3 billion in the week ended December 19, as they grew increasingly spooked by market turmoil. It was the fifth straight week of outflows of more than $1 billion, an exodus that’s driven prices to the lowest since September 2016, according to the S&P/LSTA Leveraged Loan ...

Bloomberg Morgan Stanley is planning to increase bonuses for dealmakers and traders, businesses that are on pace for a bigger revenue jump than at the firm’s rivals, according to a person familiar with the matter. Percentage increases for Morgan Stanley’s institutional-securities group will be in the low-to-mid single digits, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing pay ...

Bloomberg The Federal Reserve spent early 2018 assuring investors it wouldn’t fret if inflation climbed above its 2 percent target. That possibility now looks increasingly distant. Oil prices have slumped, weighing on expectations. Housing, a big inflation contributor throughout this cycle, is cooling. And while the core version of the Fed’s preferred price index touched 2 percent this year, Fed ...

Bloomberg UniCredit SpA is seeking to sell as much as 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) of German real-estate assets as part of a plan to boost capital, people with knowledge of the matter said. The Italian bank is working with real estate company Cushman & Wakefield on the sale of office buildings and bank branches belonging to its HypoVereinsbank unit, ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump has discussed firing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell as his frustration with the central bank chief intensified following this week’s interest-rate increase and months of stock-market losses, according to four people familiar with the matter. Advisers close to Trump aren’t convinced he would move against Powell and are hoping that the president’s latest bout of anger ...

Bloomberg What’s worse for a bank, the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression or the biggest money laundering scandal in European history? According to Danske Bank, which has lived through both, it’s the latter. The bank’s acting chief executive, Jesper Nielsen, says that during the global meltdown of 2008, concerns centered on things like “greed,” which was obviously bad. ...