Banking

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc. envisions years of tax-reform benefits ahead, even as competitors warned that their rewards may soon start fading away. Last month’s Republican-led legislation cut Citigroup’s effective threshold to about 25 percent in 2018 and company executives said it will go even lower from there, leading the bank to boost its forecast for profitability. That contrasts with JPMorgan Chase ...

Bloomberg Philippine central bank Governor Nestor Espenilla said it’s getting harder to cut the reserve requirement ratio for lenders as he’d pledged to do when he took office six months ago, with inflation set to pick up. “We have to be careful that we don’t send the signal that we are lowering the guard in terms of fighting inflation and ...

RIYADH / Reuters Saudi Arabia’s King Salman ordered a deposit of $2 billion to be paid into Yemen’s central bank on Wednesday to shore up the weak Yemeni currency, the Saudi government said. The move was made a day after the Yemeni prime minister issued a public plea for funds to prop up the rial and help stave off hunger ...

Bloomberg While the prospect of the European Central Bank’s withdrawal of monetary stimulus is bringing closer the end of an era of record-low borrowing costs in emerging Europe, it isn’t worrying countries both inside the euro area and those just on its eastern fringe. Governments from Slovakia to Croatia say their economies are in much better shape than when investors ...

Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank’s (SNB) somewhat more upbeat inflation view may not necessarily translate into early rate increases, according to a Bloomberg survey. In their first take since the SNB’s December policy meeting, when the central bank adjusted its forecasts, economists still see Switzerland’s deposit rate staying at a rock-bottom minus 0.75 percent until late 2019. A 25-basis point ...

LONDON / Reuters Saudi Aramco has not invited UBS and Bank of America Merrill Lynch to pitch for senior advisory roles in its stock market listing because they have not lent money to the state oil giant in recent years, according to five finance sources. The two investment banks, among the world’s biggest, have not been asked to attend meetings ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank (ECB) should adjust its policy guidance before the summer and shouldn’t have any problems ending net asset purchases in one swoop after September, Governing Council member Ardo Hansson said. While the Estonian policy maker judged the ECB’s current stance as broadly appropriate, he argued in an interview with German newspaper Boersen-Zeitung that there was a ...

Bloomberg Indian sovereign bonds and the rupee tumbled after a central bank official warned banks they can’t keep relying on the regulator to manage their interest-rate risks, as the rout in the debt market extended into its sixth month. The regular use of regulatory help “isn’t desirable from the point of view of efficient price discovery” in the bond market ...

Bloomberg China’s central bank boosted injections via open-market operations to the most in two months to counter seasonal tightening of liquidity. The People’s Bank of China pumped in a net 270 billion yuan ($42 billion) on Tuesday, as sales of reverse-repurchase agreements more than offset maturities. That’s the most since Nov. 16, data compiled by Bloomberg show. As much as ...

Bloomberg It finally happened: Morocco eased its grip on the dirham. But there was no stampede for dollars and the currency strengthened. Bank al-Maghrib set the reference rate at 9.2184 per dollar even after the central bank widened the dirham fluctuation band to 2.5 percent above or below its peg. And the regulator allocated less than a fifth of the ...