Banking

Bloomberg Malaysia’s central bank kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged as expected, after inflation eased and an early rate hike this year helped to bolster the currency. Bank Negara Malaysia left the overnight policy rate at 3.25 percent, it said in a statement in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, as predicted by all 17 economists in a Bloomberg survey. As one ...

FRANKFURT / Reuters BlackRock, George Soros and big sovereign wealth funds are among investors expressing interest in buying stakes in the initial public offering of Deutsche Bank’s asset management arm, a person familiar with the matter said. The sovereign funds include Singapore’s Temasek, the person said. Deutsche Bank is finalising plans for the IPO of the asset management business, known ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s trade policy has Thailand worried. Trade and geopolitics are the key risks for Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, Bank of Thailand Senior Director Don Nakornthab said in an interview in Bangkok. Exports of goods and services account for about 70 percent of Thai gross domestic product. “Trade politics is the most important risk for our economy as ...

Bloomberg Few countries conjure up images of financial ruin like Iceland. Its economy was famously gutted in 2008 when its over-sized banks all collapsed within weeks of each other. A decade later, the island nation is still trying to crisis-proof its financial system. A key goal is to shield banking operations that are vital to the economy, such as deposit-taking, ...

Bloomberg Federal investigators are seeking to question the chiefs of India’s biggest lenders as they widen their probe into the $2 billion fraud at Punjab National Bank. The Enforcement Directorate has written to the heads of 31 banks asking to meet officials about the fraud, according to people familiar with the matter. The investigators will start with state-run PNB on ...

Reuters Kazakhstan’s financial centre expects the government to issue Islamic bonds, or sukuk, in coming months as part of efforts to develop Islamic finance business in the central Asian country, an official said on Tuesday. Final legislative changes to allow issuance of sovereign sukuk are nearly complete, alongside registration of a special purpose vehicle by the Ministry of Finance, said ...

DUBAI / Reuters Egypt’s EFG Hermes is considering adding 20 percent more staff as one of the region’s biggest investment banks expects an improved deals outlook in Saudi Arabia by the second half of the year, a senior executive told Reuters. “There is massive interest in Saudi, but you will find that a lot of people are looking at it ...

RIYADH / Reuters Saudi Arabia’s central bank said it would no longer offer repurchase agreements for seven-, 28- and 90-day periods, after short-term Saudi money market rates fell below US rates for the first time in nine years. In a brief statement, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency said it no longer needed to use the instruments and aimed to preserve ...

DUBAI / Reuters The Lebanese central bank’s dollar reserves climbed by $1.4 billion in the first two months of the year and its total assets in dollars exceeded $43 billion, recovering from a decline during a political crisis at the end of last year, its governor said on Tuesday. Governor Riad Salameh said political conditions in the country had “returned ...

Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc. wants to appeal to more cashless customers, like tech-savvy millennials, while trying to cut its transaction expenses, copying a strategy set by PayPal Holdings Inc. The e-commerce giant is in talks with JPMorgan Chase Financial Co., Capital One Financial Corp. and other banks about creating new online accounts, according to two people familiar with the matter. The ...