Banking

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan is finding out just how hard it is to be stealthy — when everyone is looking right at you. The central bank looks set to end this fiscal year well behind on its target for Japanese government bond purchases. But having inadvertently sparked a yen rally in January, a repeat of this “stealth taper” of ...

Bloomberg Barclays Plc agreed to pay $2 billion to settle a probe into how it sold the sort of mortgage bonds that fueled the financial crisis, securing a penalty less than half of what US authorities originally demanded. The British lender was the only bank to push back against the size of the settlement demanded by the Justice Department, prompting ...

Bloomberg Egypt’s central bank cut interest rates for the second time in six weeks after inflation slowed into its target range, shrugging off rising US rates as it unwinds record-high borrowing costs. The monetary policy committee led by Governor Tarek Amer lowered the overnight deposit rate by 100 basis points to 16.75 percent. The move was predicted by all eight ...

Bloomberg Nordea Bank AB will start pricing debt products to reflect threats to data as the scandal engulfing Facebook Inc. redefines corporate risk. Mathias Leijon, co-head of corporate and investment banking at Nordea in Stockholm, says his team has been thinking “a lot about this” risk, with a key question emerging as, “How do you include the cost associated with ...

Bloomberg A recent spike in funding costs is happening at the worst time for Australia’s big banks, as intense public scrutiny crimps their ability to pass on increases to customers. The banks are fighting to defend their reputations in the face of an inquiry into misconduct and mistreatment of customers. Two weeks into hearings in front of a Royal Commission, ...

Bloomberg The silence all day spoke volumes about the disarray at the top of Deutsche Bank AG, say insiders and shareholders. No one at the bank — from spokespeople to the highest-ranking executives — commented publicly on a string of media reports and investor speculation that either Chairman Paul Achleitner or Chief Executive Officer John Cryan, or both, was on ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc froze an account linked to an alleged fraud that siphoned about $500 million from Angolan state coffers, according to a person briefed on the matter. A large transfer raised suspicions at the bank, prompting it to alert UK authorities at least weeks ago, the person said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. Britain’s National ...

Bloomberg Getting your head around cryptocurrencies was hard enough before governments got involved. But now that policy makers around the world are drawing up fresh regulations on everything from exchanges to initial coin offerings, keeping track of what’s legal has become just as daunting as figuring out which newfangled token might turn into the next Bitcoin. The rules can vary ...

Bloomberg Two of China’s largest banks posted better-than-expected profit growth in 2017 as a strengthening economy curbed soured loans and the government’s campaign to cut debt boosted their lending margins. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd on Tuesday reported a 3 percent increase in net income last year, while Agricultural Bank of China Ltd posted a 5 percent gain. ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank alerted auditors that lenders could try to take advantage of the transition to new accounting standards to spread the hit on loan losses over years instead of reflecting them in their 2017 financial results, three people familiar with the matter said. The ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism, which oversees the region’s largest banks, flagged the risk ...