Banking

Bloomberg South Africa will strive to allow competition into its banking system in a way that won’t threaten the stability of the industry as more and more entrants seek to rival the nation’s biggest lenders, said Kuben Naidoo, the chief executive of the Prudential Authority. While many new banking licenses are expected to be granted, these would be done within ...

Bloomberg India’s central bank stared down the rupee’s slide to a record low, opting to keep interest rates unchanged as it flagged risks to the economy from global monetary policy tightening, trade wars and surging oil prices. In a surprise decision, the monetary policy committee led by Governor Urjit Patel voted 5-1 to leave the repurchase rate at 6.5 percent. ...

Bloomberg The Estonian laundromat scandal has been on Danske Bank A/S investors’ radar for more than a year. But last week, everything changed. News of a US Department of Justice investigation has caused panic. The bank’s shares were dumped and some bondholders are even wondering whether Danske might start having trouble making interest payments on its riskiest debt. At Swedish ...

Bloomberg China’s central bank cut the amount of cash lenders must hold as reserves for the fourth time this year, as policy makers seek to shore up the economy amid a worsening trade war. The People’s Bank of China lowered the required reserve ratio for some lenders by 1 percentage point, effective from October 15, according to a statement on ...

Bloomberg Things are likely to get worse for Italian bonds before they get better. That’s the message from HSBC Holdings Plc after Italy’s government decided last week to set its 2019 budget deficit target at 2.4 percent, roiling markets. That has prompted Chris Attfield, a fixed-income strategist at the bank, to revise wider his year-end forecast for the yield spread ...

Bloomberg A global bond selloff has sent Japan’s benchmark yield to a level last seen when the central bank introduced its negative interest-rate policy in January 2016 to revive a weakening economy. The 10-year yield rose two basis points to 0.155 percent, after a rout in Treasuries that saw similar-maturity US yields jump to the highest level since 2011. The ...

Bloomberg Greece is weighing a plan to help banks speed up their bad-loan disposals, possibly including a government guarantee, in a bid to restore confidence in the battered sector, people familiar with the matter said. While the details are still being worked out, the proposal would see lenders unload some bad loans into special purpose vehicles, taking them off banks’ ...

Bloomberg After lenders in Germany have already slashed about 188,000 jobs since the year 2000, many employees are now increasingly seeing digitalisation as the next big threat to employment. In the country’s private banking industry alone, around 40 percent of employees believe that digitalisation will worsen long-term job security over the next two years, according to a study by the ...

Bloomberg There’s a powerful person in Washington besides the president who can barely contain his enthusiasm for the US economy. It’s the man Donald Trump appointed to head the Federal Reserve and whom he’s attacked for raising interest rates: Jerome Powell. In what Fed watchers say was unprecedented four public appearances over the past week, Powell repeatedly lauded the economy’s ...

Bloomberg Danske Bank A/S said the US has started an investigation into a money laundering case involving Denmark’s biggest bank that has already toppled its chief executive officer and triggered numerous other probes. The development comes as criminal investigations are under way in Estonia and Denmark, and after Danske said that a large part of about $235 billion that flowed ...