Banking

Bloomberg Banks in Norway, Scandinavia’s most prosperous economy, are among the best capitalised in Europe thanks to rules that are considerably stricter than those recommended by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Now, the bankers’ association in Oslo is hoping local authorities will ease Norwegian requirements after the Basel Committee sent out its completed framework last week. But Norwegian banks ...

Bloomberg Polish central bank Governor Adam Glapinski makes up in bravado what he lacks in evidence. Glapinski was unapologetic last week when confronted with figures that showed price pressures on the rise and inflation unexpectedly on target months earlier than forecast. In fact, Glapinski said the data “even reinforced” his conviction that the country’s longest-ever pause on interest rates can ...

Bloomberg India’s inflation surged past the central bank’s target, bolstering a view that interest rates may rise earlier than expected and offering little relief to battered bond markets. Consumer prices rose 4.9 percent in November from a year earlier as food and fuel costs surged, the Statistics Ministry said in a statement. That’s the fastest pace in 15 months and ...

Bloomberg Wall Street economists are telling investors to brace for the biggest tightening of monetary policy in more than a decade. With the world economy heading into its strongest period since 2011, Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. predict average interest rates across advanced economies will climb to at least 1 percent next year in what would be the ...

Bloomberg Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc is likely to leave its bonus pool little changed this year, according to people with knowledge of the matter, ending a spate of annual declines in payouts dating back to the financial crisis. A final decision on the discretionary awards hasn’t been made and will be taken in January, one of the people ...

MANAMA / Emirates Business Ithmaar Bank, a Bahrain-based Islamic retail bank, was honoured at a ceremony attended by senior bankers from across the Middle East after it was named Best Islamic Retail Bank in Bahrain. Ithmaar Bank was presented the prestigious award following a comprehensive selection and review process conducted by a committee of high-level economists and banking professionals, as ...

Bloomberg Adrian Orr will oversee the biggest overhaul of New Zealand’s central bank since it pioneered inflation targeting in the early 1990s. Orr, 54, will begin a five-year term as governor of the Reserve Bank on March 27, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in Wellington. A former deputy governor and chief economist at the RBNZ, Orr currently heads the New ...

Bloomberg The next governor of the Bank of Japan faces a “job from hell.” That’s according to Takeshi Fujimaki, a banker-turned-lawmaker who sees any attempt by Japan’s central bank to exit its prog- ram of unprecedented easing as triggering a Greek-like debt crisis. “This is the calm before the battle,” Fujimaki, an opposition Japan Innovation Party politician who once served ...

Bloomberg As stocks surge and consumer prices inch higher, investors say it’s time for the Bank of Ja-pan to reduce equity purchases that have been criticised for distorting the market. Sometime next year, the BOJ will cut its annual buying target for domestic exchange-traded funds by as much as a third from the current 6 trillion yen ($53 billion), says ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s central bank allowed the rupee to decline as it bowed to persistent economic pressure, including widening deficits and declining foreign-exchange reserves. The rupee closed at 107 per dollar at the close on the interbank market, after falling as low as 109.5 per dollar, the State Bank of Pakistan said in an emailed statement. The currency — officially a ...