Banking

Bloomberg BNP Paribas SA and Societe Generale SA missed out on the trading gains that boosted earnings at some of their US and European rivals in the first quarter, sending their shares tumbling. Trading income at BNP Paribas, the largest French lender, fell 15 percent as a drop in sales from fixed-income, currencies and commodities outweighed a gain in equities, ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England will hold off increasing interest rates next week and cut its forecasts for both growth and inflation, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Just three out of the 54 banks questioned expect a rate hike at the May 10 meeting, compared with about three-quarters of those asked last month. The survey also showed economists are ...

Bloomberg One of the Federal Reserve’s most senior officials and his incoming successor both said that overshooting the US central bank’s 2 percent inflation target for a time is nothing to worry about because the central bank has been below the goal for so long. “I’ve said it many times: being a little above 2 percent after being below 2 ...

Bloomberg Depositors started lining up outside Banesco Banco Universal’s branches in eastern Caracas, hoping to get cash — and answers — after Venezuela’s government seized the nation’s largest privately held bank. Half a dozen police officers carrying assault weapons stood outside the landmark emerald-glass headquarters of the institution known as Banesco after news of what authorities called a 90-day intervention ...

Bloomberg Australia left its key interest rate unchanged at a record low — as expected — amid the slowing of a hiring boom. Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe kept the cash rate at 1.5 percent, where it has stood since late 2016, as the central bank waits for inflation to strengthen. The nation’s jobs growth has declined to a three-month ...

Bloomberg Canada’s big banks don’t seem keen to follow Toronto-Dominion Bank’s lead on mortgage hikes — at least not all the way. Posted mortgage rates have diverged in the past week following rate hikes by Toronto-Dominion, Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and National Bank of Canada. Bank of Nova Scotia and Bank of Montreal have stood ...

Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc’s Bill Winters is closing in on his return target after three years spent struggling to transform the emerging markets lender, but the bank hasn’t shaken off concerns about costs and growth. The lender posted the highest quarterly revenue of the chief executive’s tenure and warned expenses may escalate this year. Nevertheless, a 7 percent increase in ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. expects to book an $800 million pretax charge in the second quarter as it redeems $3.5 billion of trust preferred securities (TruPS), eliminating much of its remaining stockpile. Trust preferred securities are equity-like debt instruments that pay interest like bonds. Banks favoured issuing them during the financial crisis because they were treated like equity, and ...

Bloomberg New Zealand regulators are seeking assurances that local lenders aren’t involved in the same unethical behavior coming to light in Australia’s banking inquiry. The Financial Markets Authority and Reserve Bank spoke with the heads of New Zealand’s major banks, telling them to provide evidence that they’re not engaged in practices unearthed by a Royal Commission in Australia, an RBNZ ...

Bloomberg Nordic banks, once coveted as the best-run and best-capitalised in Europe, appear to be losing their luster. After publishing first-quarter results, banks based in Sweden and Denmark are among the year’s worst performers in the Bloomberg index of European financial stocks. In fact, you need to have been an investor in Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA or ...