Banking

Bloomberg The International Monetary Fund lauded Egypt’s economic reform efforts but urged the central bank to be ready to take action if slowing inflation heats up. The fund sounded its note of caution as its executive board signed off on the latest review of Egypt’s reform program. The seal of approval opened the door to another $2 billion tranche of ...

Bloomberg Sweden’s financial regulator says giving national supervisors additional powers over bank branches — even systemically important ones like Nordea Bank AB — is bad policy. According to Martin Noreus, deputy director general of the Financial Supervisory Authority in Stockholm, national regulators risk missing the big picture. “It is sub-optimal and risky when different supervisors act too much in silos,” ...

Bloomberg A lawyer for UBS Group AG urged a New York jury to reject the tale of a former senior bond strategist who claims he was fired for refusing to let the Swiss bank’s traders influence his research reports. Trevor Murray, a onetime UBS strategist for commercial mortgage-backed securities, alleges he was dismissed in 2012 for blowing the whistle on ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan left policy settings unchanged in the final meeting of 2017, retaining its unprecedented monetary sti- mulus as it waits for a pickup in stubbornly low inflation. With Japan’s economy continuing to grow at a healthy pace, and inflation at least moving in the right direction, there is little pressure on the BOJ adjust its interest-rate ...

Bloomberg Denmark’s government is wondering how much longer the economy will be exposed to the distortions wrought by negative interest rates, and is urging European Union leaders to enter a debate on the appropriateness of the current monetary policy environment. The country, which has lived with negative rates longer than any other, has been forced to keep its main monetary ...

Bloomberg Mexico’s central bank Governor Alejandro Diaz de Leon reinforced the bank’s tight monetary policy stance, saying there was far too much uncertainty over US trade talks and persistently high inflation to change course now. While acknowledging the impact high interest rates have on already sluggish economic growth, the central bank sees an even larger cost if it doesn’t anchor ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England is holding off from forcing most European banks operating in the UK to become subsidiaries, but says it’s ready to get tougher if progress towards a Brexit deal breaks down. Governor Mark Carney told lawmakers in London that making lenders and insurers go through the process of setting up subsidiaries, only to then reverse course ...

Bloomberg ANZ Bank New Zealand said the country’s Overseas Investment Office has declined the application of China’s HNA Group to acquire UDC Finance. “While the sale agreement between the parties remains in place, unless HNA successfully overturns the OIO decision, the sale will not proceed,” ANZ New Zealand Chief Executive David Hisco said in a statement. “We don’t know if ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said the lender is pushing to deepen some of the busin-ess it conducts in China as the world’s No. 2 economy opens further to foreign investment. The US bank is working towards “local incorporation” in China so that it can more easily help firms there sell debt, Moynihan said in ...

Bloomberg An inflation rate that’s breached India’s target and growth that continues below potential will probably prompt the cen-tral bank to keep interest rates unchanged through the coming year. The benchmark repurchase rate will stay at 6 percent until at least the first quarter of 2019, according to most economists in a Bloomberg survey published this month. While swap markets ...