Banking

Bloomberg The case for the People’s Bank of China to cut the amount of cash lenders are required to hold is getting stronger. Chinese banks racked up 2.93 trillion yuan ($457 billion) in medium-term loans extended by the PBOC scheduled for repayment during the rest of 2018. That has prompted some analysts to raise bets the PBOC may soon repeat ...

Bloomberg The Fed should slow its pace of policy normalisation to help re-align price expectations around 2 percent and maintain the credibility of its inflation target, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said on Tuesday in Tokyo. “Inflation expectations in the US remain somewhat low, suggesting that further normalisation may not be necessary to keep inflation near ...

Bloomberg Bad loans at India’s five biggest state-run banks were about 456.8 billion rupees ($6.8 billion) more than the lenders had assessed. Audits by the regulator for the year ended March 31, 2017, revealed the discrepancies, triggering large losses as the banks increased provisions. If you add IDBI Bank Ltd., which doesn’t feature among the biggest but got the largest ...

Bloomberg Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait is on the look out for acquisitions in the Gulf region as it seeks to boost revenue from international operations. “We want to manage and absorb the last merger, but we’re always looking for acquisitions,” Chief Executive Officer Michel Accad said in an interview in Kuwait City. “We can consider anything at the right ...

Bloomberg The biggest bank in the Nordic region says Europe’s revision of market rules is likely to exacerbate a slump in the number of analysts covering smaller companies, making it harder for them to raise capital. Nordea Bank AB says the firms affected by the development should consider commissioning their own research to help “alleviate the risk of falling off ...

Bloomberg Reports of the death of the sovereign-bank “ doom loop” are greatly exaggerated. Italian government bonds have blown up, with the yield on two-year notes skyrocketing by as much as 192 basis points on Tuesday to the highest level since 2012. Spreads on subordinated de-bts from euro-area financial companies, meanwhile, have jumped in sympathy as Rome’s political turmoil reverberates ...

Bloomberg This isn’t the inflation the European Central Bank is looking for — but it is inflation. Figures this week are forecast to show euro-area consumer-price growth could have reached its fastest since early 2017 on the back of more expensive oil and a rebound in travel costs. The cost of crude and a weaker euro are also set to ...

Bloomberg From trade talks and scrapped deals to elections and government infighting, “uncertainty” has emerged as the biggest obstacle for Canada, according to the head of the nation’s largest lender. “It’s all this uncertainty we’re looking at,” Toronto-Dominion Bank Chief Executive Officer Bharat Masrani said in a BNN Bloomberg interview when asked what’s the biggest risk to his bank’s Canadian ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and other top central bankers defended their use of unconventional policies during and after the financial crisis, but said more work was needed before they could declare the experiments successful. “The test is not over,” Powell said, less than three weeks before the Fed is expected to raise its policy interest rate for a ...

Bloomberg National Australia Bank Ltd. said it will ensure no customers suffer financial losses after a nationwide system outage left Internet banking, ATMs and EFTPOS terminals out of service. The event was “incredibly rare” and no personal data was compromised, Cindy Batchelor, NAB Business executive general manager, told reporters in Melbourne, according to a transcript. She said all customers were ...