Banking

Bloomberg A warning indicator for banking stress in China fell for a fifth-straight quarter, signaling that the leadership’s drive to squeeze risk from the financial system is making progress. China’s credit-to-gross domestic product “gap” declined to 18.9 percent in the second quarter from 22.1 percent in the first three months of this year, according to data released by the Bank ...

Bloomberg Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda gave the clearest signal yet that his recent comments about the “reversal rate” theory weren’t an indication of tighter monetary policy in the coming year. The BOJ’s yield-curve control program, partly intended to address the impact of monetary easing on Japanese banks, has been successful and hasn’t created any problems for financial ...

Bloomberg The Indian central bank’s tendency to overestimate inflation has prevented it from cutting interest rates further and cost the economy, according to one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s advisers. “Their view of the economy doesn’t seem to be correct,” and by keeping rates high, they “have imposed a high output sacrifice,” said Ashima Goyal, a member of Prime Minister’s ...

Bloomberg Central bankers are starting to see promising results from one of the recent additions to their monetary policy toolbox. Lending curbs to stem financial risk — so-called macroprudential limits — have helped slow risky borrowing and temper property price bubbles in countries from New Zealand to Canada, a host of financial stability reports showed this week. While there hasn’t ...

Bloomberg As far as Brexit headaches go, Barclays Plc’s John McFarlane says that while his bank is on top of job relocations, he’s more concerned about rewriting “hundreds of thousands” of contracts. He’s not alone. Andrew Bailey, head of the UK Financial Conduct Authority, said “contract continuity” is among the biggest potential disruptions in a no-deal, no-transition Brexit. Both Bailey ...

Bloomberg One of Sweden’s main financial-worker unions says the job cuts announced in October by Nordea Bank AB are just the beginning of a transformation that’s about to hit the whole industry as more financial firms come to rely on digital solutions. The Nordic region’s biggest bank has yet to reveal to its staff who exactly will be affected by ...

Bloomberg If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. That’s the calculation Australia’s biggest banks and the government have made in deciding to cave in to pressure for a public inquiry into alleged misconduct in the financial industry. After months of denouncing the idea of a Royal Commission as an expensive waste of time, the big four banks staged a backflip ...

Bloomberg A second daily surge in Europe’s overnight benchmark rate, which banks use to provide loans to one another, sparked widespread speculation among traders about the trigger, though there were no signs of wider funding stress. Some traders attributed the jump in the Eonia rate to possible year-end funding squeeze at some lenders, while others pinned it down to demand ...

Bloomberg Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc will close 259 more branches across Britain in its latest round of cuts as customers shift to online banking. Outlets under both the NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland brands will close in the middle of next year, resulting in about 680 job cuts, the company said. RBS said it will use the ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England may increase a key financial safety measure for a third time because it’s worried that a combination of a disorderly Brexit and a global recession could be enough to put the brakes on lending. The central bank is going ahead with a planned increase in the countercyclical capital buffer to 1 percent from 0.5 percent, ...