Banking

Bloomberg Sweden’s central bank formally ended a program of bond purchases after almost three years, but pledged support for the nation’s debt market into 2019 in a step designed to ensure a smooth retreat from record stimulus. In the Stockholm-based Riksbank’s last meeting of 2017, policy makers kept their key interest rate unchanged at minus 0.5 percent, as expected by ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is likely to ask Governor Haruh- iko Kuroda to lead the Bank of Japan for another five years, according to a Kuroda associate and BOJ adviser. “I expect Kuroda will continue to be governor,” Masahiro Kawai said in an interview. The chances are “very high” because both Abe and Finance Minister Taro Aso have expressed ...

Bloomberg Bangladesh is getting tough with the nation’s bankers as it attempts to avert a looming crisis caused by rising bad loans and weak capital ratios. The central bank said it ousted the chief executive officer of Farmers Bank, a small private-sector lender, accusing him of “gross irregularities in lending.” That followed the removal earlier in the month of the ...

Bloomberg Having subdued Australia’s housing market frenzy, Governor Philip Lowe now has to steer his way through the hangover. Despite being saddled with record household debt and wretched wages growth, Australia’s economy is showing signs of picking up steam, with hiring on a tear and firms investing. The dual narratives have prompted the central bank to sit still on record-low ...

Bloomberg Central bankers around the world have set up or are creating departments to embrace big data in the quest for deeper insight into the economies they manage. “Isaac Asimov once said, ‘I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them,’” David Hardoon, chief data officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said in a recent speech. “We ...

Bloomberg Sweden’s financial industry is growing at a fast enough pace to ensure that the thousands of bankers being replaced by robots will still be needed, according to the country’s financial regulator. A digital revolution is seemingly making humans redundant. But Martin Noreus, the deputy director general at the Stockholm-based Financial Supervisory Authority, says most of the bankers affected won’t ...

Bloomberg The private-banking arm of Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. is adding more staff in Dubai, as the Singapore lender se- eks a greater role managing the money of the Middle East’s wealthy and of Indians living overseas. Bank of Singapore plans to hire about 20 relationship managers next year to cater to non-resident Indians and rich people in the Arab world, ...

Bloomberg Australia’s central bank may start raising interest rates from a record low as soon as May, putting the brakes on house-price growth, according to hedge fund manager Brett Gillespie. A drop in the unemployment rate to 5 percent in the second quarter of next year will be the trigger for the Reserve Bank of Australia to start lifting rates, ...

Bloomberg Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is set to propose a new central bank governor this week, filling a position that’s been vacant since May as the government struggles to get its $17.5 billion bailout back on track with the International Monetary Fund. Poroshenko will reveal his nomination in the next two days, with parliament to vote on his proposal on ...

Bloomberg National Bank of Kuwait, the country’s largest lender, plans to hire hundreds of people and open more branches in Saudi Arabia and Egypt as it targets growth in the Middle East’s biggest markets. NBK, as the bank is known, will open in Riyadh and Dammam by the end of next year after opening its first branch in Saudi Arabia ...