Banking

Bloomberg UBS Group AG Chairman Axel Weber said the Swiss bank won’t trade Bitcoin or offer it to retail clients as increased regulation could lead to a “massive” drop in value. “This is something where the price is really unclear,” Weber said in an interview on Wednesday with Bloomberg TV at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We fear ...

Bloomberg State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank will be among lenders that receive 881 billion rupees ($14 billion) of fresh capital the government had pledged for state-run banks in the year through March 31. SBI, the nation’s biggest lender by assets, will get 88 billion rupees while Punjab National Bank will take 55 billion rupees, Rajiv Kumar, banking ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan will continue with its unprecedented monetary easing policy for a “couple more years” and it will remain tough for lenders to make money from doling out credit, according to the top executive at Mizuho Financial Group Inc. “Just simple lending business is not so profitable, and this situation will last,” Chief Executive Officer Yasuhiro Sato ...

Bloomberg Strains are spreading in China’s $15 trillion shadow banking industry as investors pull back from the debt-like savings products that helped drive leverage to dangerous levels. Most affected are some $3.8 trillion of so-called trust products, until now the fastest-growing shadow banking segment and a popular way for debt-ridden property developers and local governments to raise funds from millions ...

Bloomberg As Nordea Bank AB blazes a trail in Europe by banning its employees from trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the regulator is taking a back seat in a decision-making process it says is better left to the industry. Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority thinks “every institution must decide on the details of their internal regulations specifying the rules for their ...

DUBAI / Reuters Citigroup has won formal approval from Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market Authority to begin investment banking business there, the US bank said on Tuesday. More than a dozen foreign banks have licences to operate branches in Saudi Arabia, battling for business resulting from the kingdom’s reforms to wean its economy off oil revenues. Citi was among the banks ...

Bloomberg Governor Haruhiko Kuroda delivered a message to investors speculating that the Bank of Japan might be nearing the start of policy normalisation: Not so fast. Kuroda said the BOJ wasn’t in a position to even consider exiting its current policy, after it maintained its massive stimulus program and kept its inflation and economic forecasts unchanged earlier on Tuesday. “Given ...

Bloomberg The African Development Bank plans to increase its loans to Nigeria by more than $2 billion next year with investments in energy, infrastructure and agriculture, its President Akinwumi Adesina said. “The total portfolio we have in Nigeria is $6 billion,” Adesina said in a Jan. 18 interview in Abuja, the capital. “We expect that by the year 2019, we ...

Bloomberg Foreign-currency trading on Egypt’s interbank system has climbed to $14.5 billion since the November 2016 decision to float the currency, central bank Governor Tarek Amer told Bloomberg. Bank trading in dollars — almost non-existent before the float — had reached $9 billion in September. The 60 percent rise since then reflects growing confidence in the economy after reforms aimed ...

Bloomberg Europe’s financial technology startups are on hiring mode, fighting each other – and the incumbents — in what one executive described as a “war for talent.” Payments company GoCardless Ltd., which employs 170 people in London, will open a Paris office in February, said chief product and technology officer Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas. Online lender LendInvest Ltd. said it will make ...