Banking

Bloomberg Bank of Montreal (BMO) set a profit record for its US business, thanks in part to Donald Trump’s tax cuts and lower provisions for bad loans. The lender earned $281 million from its US personal-and-commercial division in the fiscal third quarter, helped by rising revenue, and tax reform gains. Earnings for the US business, which includes Chicago-based BMO Harris ...

Bloomberg A deadline set by India’s central bank to restructure an estimated $52 billion of stressed loans may push dozens more companies into bankruptcy. The Reserve Bank of India in February introduced new rules and a 180-day timeline for banks to recast loans once payments are missed, scrapping previous methods that could take an indefinite amount of time. Companies that ...

Bloomberg China’s yuan was stable in the onshore market following Friday’s surge, after the central bank signalled that it’s taking action to support the currency through its daily fixing. Starting this month, banks resumed using an adjustment in the daily pricing of the currency against the dollar, known as the counter-cyclical factor, to mitigate the bias towards a weaker yuan, ...

Bloomberg President Xi Jinping’s push to spur lending in his economy stands to benefit Postal Savings Bank of China Ltd., whose ubiquitous green-fronted outlets have been luring deposits across the nation. This branch network, the widest in the world, has become a source of cheap funds for the lender, ensuring it’s better placed than rivals amid the government’s crackdown on ...

Bloomberg One under-appreciated indicator is flashing red for some developed markets, Goldman Sachs analysts say. The private-sector financial balance — an economy’s total income minus the spending of all households and businesses — has proven more powerful in predicting crises than the current-account balance, Goldman analysts led by Jan Hatzius, the bank’s global head of economics, wrote in an August ...

Bloomberg Pound investors hoping for a turnaround anytime soon could instead face more turbulence. The UK’s and the European Union’s plan to negotiate Brexit continuously from now on suggests there will be more political headlines, potentially fueling volatility, according to strategists at Royal Bank of Canada and Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. With UK markets shut for a ...

Bloomberg Nordea Bank AB has recently lost a number of its top sell-side bankers amid complaints that management’s focus on cutting 6,000 jobs is hurting morale in key parts of the business. Examples of recent departures include the head of fixed income at Nordea Markets, Torben Pedersen. He’s in the process of starting his own hedge fund with Erik Bo ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Thailand is giving the baht — the most-loved emerging-market currency this month — one more reason to keep up its outperformance. Piggybacking on a strong current-account surplus, the baht has braved developing-market doldrums and topped returns among 24 currencies tracked by Bloomberg. It is also the sole gainer in Asia this quarter. As investors await the ...

Bloomberg The People’s Bank of China and Federal Reserve delivered a one-two punch to the dollar, spurring the biggest selloff in a month and raising the specter of further weakness ahead. The PBOC announced that banks would resume using the “counter-cyclical” factor when calculating the yuan’s daily reference rate, restraining the influence of market forces that have been driving the ...

Bloomberg A discussion of competition and “superstar” firms at an exclusive economic policy conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, threw up a spirited defense of global trade, while central bankers were also warned of the low level of trust they enjoy among the public. “We should think twice about undermining the discipline of openness” and the competition that’s created by global ...