Banking

Bloomberg Analysts are taking note of the struggles in China’s banking industry, which is being battered by an official deleveraging drive. At least five smaller lenders have been downgraded by credit-rating companies this year, a record pace for the sector. Spikes in the volume of non-performing loans and an increase in loans overdue are among the reasons. One of the ...

Bloomberg Blackstone Group LP wants to crash the direct-lending party. In the seven months since dissolving a partnership with FS Investment Corp., Blackstone’s GSO Capital Partners unit has rebuilt its business making nonbank loans to small and mid-size companies. GSO has extended some credit already and plans to amass $10 billion of equity and debt capital for the effort in ...

Bloomberg Barclays Plc is considering a return to consumer banking in India as it seeks to deploy more of the capital it holds in the South Asian unit, people familiar with the matter said. The UK bank, which decided to pull out of the business in 2011, aims to rebuild the retail banking operation in Asia’s third-largest economy through digital ...

Bloomberg The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) made the biggest-ever injection of Medium-term Lending Facility funds, in a move that analysts described as further evidence of a shift to monetary easing. The PBOC skipped adding funds via seven-day reverse repurchase agreements on Monday while offering 502 billion yuan of its loans with one-year maturity to major banks in the open ...

Bloomberg Banca Carige SpA, the Italian lender hit by board and management departures, said it has been instructed by the European Central Bank (ECB) to submit a new capital-boosting plan and consider options including a merger. The shares dropped. The ECB’s move came after the central bank rejected a capital-conservation plan presented by the Genoa-based bank on June 22, and ...

Bloomberg It’s been another miserable week for South Africa’s rand, but policy support may be coming closer, if money-market bets are anything to go by. The currency slumped more than 2 percent as the South African Reserve Bank left its benchmark rate unchanged at 6.5 percent, a level Governor Lesetja Kganyago described as “accommodative,” while warning that inflation pressures are ...

Bloomberg Ghana took back control of Agricultural Development Bank Ltd. (ADB) after the regulator annulled deals for more than half of the lender’s shares following its initial public offering in 2016.Belstar and Starmount are affiliates and entered into deals with SIC and Ecobank Capital Ltd., the asset management unit of Ecobank Ghana Ltd., to purchase ADB’s shares without the regulator’s knowledge, ...

Bloomberg Indonesia’s central bank left its benchmark interest rate unchanged after three hikes in a row helped to stabilize the currency in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy. The seven-day reverse repurchase rate was held at 5.25%, in line with forecasts of 25 of 28 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Governor Perry Warjiyo said the policy stance remains “hawkish” with the central bank’s ...

Bloomberg Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda stuck to the bank’s playbook, declining to comment on reports that policy makers are considering measures to soften the side effects of their aggressive monetary easing campaign. Remarks on the issue wouldn’t be appropriate given the proximity of the bank’s monetary policy meeting, Kuroda said, adding that any policy decision will require ...

Bloomberg Lloyds Banking Group Plc may set aside hundreds of millions of pounds in the second quarter to compensate customers improperly sold payment protection insurance as claims continue to flood in. The redress costs will add to about 18 billion pounds ($23 billion) already booked by Britain’s biggest mortgage lender since the start of the scandal. Analysts at Morgan Stanley ...