Banking

Bloomberg India’s regulator unearthed about $3.6 billion of bad loans in the books of the country’s biggest bank, amplifying questions about distress in the financial sector given underreporting by some rivals as well. State Bank of India said an audit by the central bank showed soured debt was about 232 billion rupees ($3.6 billion) higher than what the state-run lender ...

Bloomberg Just 8 percent of cybersecurity heads at US financial firms report to the chief executive officer directly and more should do so to help facilitate decision-making, according to the Financial Services Information Sharing & Analysis Center. The industry group’s first-ever survey on the topic showed that 39 percent of chief information security officers report directly to the chief information ...

Bloomberg Australia’s banks, rocked by years of scandals and wrongdoing, risk having further misconduct exposed as a powerful government-appointed inquiry into the nation’s financial industry starts. The yearlong Royal Commission will examine the nation’s banks, insurers, financial services providers and pension funds, and consider whether regulators have enough power to tackle misconduct. The first public hearings will focus on allegations ...

Bloomberg Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, the state-rescued Italian bank, fell in Milan trading after it reported a fourth-quarter loss on weak revenue and restructuring costs. The shares were down 2.8 percent at 3.72 euros as of 9:55 a.m. The stock, which returned to trading on October 25 after an 10-month suspension, is now valued more than 43 ...

Bloomberg Peter Selman, hired out of retirement by Deutsche Bank AG to turn around Wall Street’s worst-hit equities business, wants to tap universities rather than rivals to do so. “We certainly have holes to fill and we’re hiring,” Selman, an ex- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner who joined the German lender in November, said in a phone interview. “But we’re ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Italy expects the nation’s economy to expand in 2018 at the same pace as last year since monetary policy “is working” and the ongoing reduction of economic slack has strengthened confidence, Governor Ignazio Visco said. The central bank expects Italy’s gross domestic product will expand about 1.5 percent this year and should remain above 1 percent ...

Bloomberg Mexico’s central bank raised its key interest rate as expected for a second straight meeting and signalled it will prioritise the peso’s inflation implications rather than moves by the Federal Reserve for its future decisions. Banco de Mexico’s board voted unanimously to lift borrowing costs a quarter point to 7.5 percent, a move forecast by 23 of 26 economists ...

DUBAI / Reuters Sharp swings in global financial markets in the past few days are not worrying since economic growth is strong but reforms are still needed to avert future crises, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund said on Sunday. Christine Lagarde, speaking at a conference on global business and social trends in Dubai, said economies were also ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank has woken up to the risks digital currencies can pose to policy makers’ bread-and-butter business: the economy. “If you increasingly have bridges between the virtual world and the real world and then there is a collapse in this virtual world, it could drain liquidity from the real world,” Executive Board member Yves Mersch said in ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Russia is refocussing its sights on trying to support economic growth after inflation settled at the lowest level in the country’s modern history and geopolitical risks receded. While central banks tend to eschew efforts to look beyond their mandate, policy makers in Moscow appear willing to take on the challenge of economic growth head on. The ...