Banking

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 ...

Bloomberg Irish banks paid out over a half a billion euros to customers caught in a mortgage overcharging scandal, according to the nation’s central bank governor. Lenders handed 580 million euros to affected customers by the end of August, an increase of about 120 million euros since the end of March, central bank Governor Philip Lane was expected to say ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell welcomed recent increases in Americans’ wages while expressing confidence that low unemployment won’t spur a takeoff in prices that would force him to hike interest rates aggressively. “The rise in wages is broadly consistent with observed rates of price inflation and labor productivity growth and therefore does not point to an overheating labor market,” ...

Bloomberg Randal Quarles, the Federal Reserve’s vice chairman for supervision, is vying with the head of the Dutch central bank to lead a watchdog panel for the global financial system. Quarles, the US central bank’s chief Wall Street regulator, and Klaas Knot are the front-runners to lead the Basel-based Financial Stability Board after Mark Carney steps down on Dec. 1, ...

Bloomberg Italian assets were roiled yet again after a prominent euroskeptic said that the nation could resolve its debt problems with its “own currency.” The yield on the nation’s 10-year bonds touched the highest level in more than four years after Claudio Borghi, head of the lower house budget committee, said the euro was “not sufficient” to solve Italy’s fiscal ...

Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. hasn’t yet satisfied one of the regulators responsible for deciding whether the bank is properly reimbursing customers who might have been harmed by recent scandals involving its auto-lending and mortgage businesses. “We are not comfortable where we are with them,” Joseph Otting, chief of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, told senators at ...

Bloomberg As Danske Bank A/S struggles through its worst crisis this century, it’s also undergoing an historic shift in its upper ranks. Denmark’s biggest bank has lost six of its highest-ranking people since December, including its chief executive officer, its chief financial officer, its general counsel and its heads of international banking and wealth management. The bank’s chairman has signaled ...

Bloomberg The money laundering scandal engulfing Danske Bank A/S has Denmark’s political establishment on edge. After living through the crisis of 2008, and the populist wave that followed, some of Denmark’s most prominent political figures say it’s now imperative that voters aren’t left with the same sense of indignation that they felt roughly a decade ago. Morten Ostergaard, the leader ...

Bloomberg The era of zero interest rates in the world’s major eco-nomies ended with the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise borrowing costs last week. The average interest rate in developed economies weighted for output passed 1 percent for the first time since 2009, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. A similar gauge for the Group-of-10 economies compiled by Natwest Markets ...