Banking

Bloomberg Morocco will loosen its currency peg in a long-awaited move aimed at strengthening its economy and avoiding financial imbalances that forced a slew of emerging nations into sharp devaluations. Bank al-Maghrib, as the central bank is known, will allow the dirham to fluctuate 2.5 percent above or below its official rate, significantly widening the band from 0.3 percent each ...

Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. isn’t giving up its mortgage-lending crown without a fight. The bank wants to hold on to its top spot as the whale of the $1.7 billion industry in the US, even as it predicts profit margins on making home loans will shrink this year and it faces pressure from rival Quicken Loans Inc. “We want ...

Bloomberg Canada’s financial watchdog plans to revise capital requirements for the nation’s banks, drafting more risk-sensitive interim rules while moving faster towards adopting new criteria set by global regulators. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions’ Carolyn Rogers announced the changes during a speech at a conference hosted by RBC Capital Markets in Toronto. She said Canadian banks would ...

Bloomberg Japan’s economy will exceed growth forecasts this year, prompting the central bank to tighten monetary policy by mid-year, said Allen Sinai, president of Decision Economics Inc. Sinai said he expects Japan’s economy to grow 2 percent in 2018, and even faster in 2019, perhaps as much as 2.5 percent. “What has snuck up on everybody is the world business ...

Bloomberg Morocco will adopt a more flexible exchange rate from Monday as part of a long-awaited plan aimed at boosting the competitiveness of the North African nation’s economy. Bank Al-Maghrib, Morocco’s central bank, said in a statement it would widen the official band within which the dirham fluctuates to 5 percent, with a maximum daily moves of 2.5 percent above ...

Bloomberg The Philippine central bank is beefing up its data tools to get a better handle on a fast-growing economy, which is starting to flash warning signs because of a rapid buildup of debt. Like central banks across Southeast Asia, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas is pushing to capture information from “big data,” drawn from sources such as online search engines, ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank is again struggling to get the message across to markets that any unwinding of stimulus will be slow and steady. The euro soared, bonds slid and investors this week stepped up bets that interest rates will rise before the end of 2018, disregarding President Mario Draghi’s assurances that no such thing will happen until well ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc made a slew of hires from rivals including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as the bank revamps its equities business in the Asia-Pacific region and expands a nascent majority-owned securities venture in China, people familiar with the matter said. Among the recent additions are Michael Parry, who joined from Goldman Sachs as a director focused on Asian ...

Bloomberg Global central banks are being served a sharp reminder by investors that their monetary policy planning carries the potential to roil the financial markets in 2018. A minor tweak in the Bank of Japan’s bond-purchase operation saw the yen strengthen more than 1 percent in two days. A change in the way China’s central bank manages the yuan sparked ...

Bloomberg Dollar bears take heed: Asian central banks may be putting the brakes on the greenback’s slide. After working for three years to staunch the yuan’s slump, China is now moving to combat the opposite problem. The People’s Bank of China has stopped using a component of its daily fixing formula that had been widely interpreted as a tool to ...