Banking

Bloomberg Polish wages grew at the fastest pace in more than five years, casting fresh doubt over the central bank’s ability to keep a lid on inflation. The readout showed a 7.4 percent wage increase in October from a year earlier, exposing a steeper acceleration than forecast by 23 of the 24 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Wage growth was distorted ...

Bloomberg It’s only a matter of time before central banks adopt blockchain to settle high-value, interbank fund transfers, according to the head of Ripple, whose technology has won support from former Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. As the technology, which is based on encrypted distributed ledgers, catches on, central banks around the world will be afraid to miss out, Ripple ...

Bloomberg Credit Suisse AG will pay $135 million to resolve currency-manipulation allegations by New York’s banking regulator, the latest echo from authorities’ long-running scrutiny of foreign-currency trading at big banks. Traders at the Zurich-based bank, prodded by executives in some cases, shared information about clients’ currency orders, talked to traders from other banks and in some instances front-ran customer orders ...

Bloomberg Sberbank PJSC set a record for profit in the third quarter, strengthening the case for fatter dividends as Russia’s biggest bank weighs changes to shareholder payouts. Net income rose 62 percent from a year earlier to 222 billion rubles ($3.68 billion), compared with a 193 billion-ruble average estimate of eight analysts surveyed by Bloo-mberg. The previous record was set ...

Bloomberg New rules to protect taxpayers from bank failures may push investors out of a C$95 billion ($75 billion) corner of Canada’s corporate bond market, reducing liquidity and raising borrowing costs. Under a regime set to take effect in 2018, short-term bank-deposit notes typically sold to institutional investors will gradually be replaced by senior “bail-in” debt that can convert to ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England is on a one-a-year cycle when it comes to interest-rate increases, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The BOE lifted its benchmark to 0.5 percent on November 2 — the first hike in a decade — and the median forecast is for another move in the fourth quarter of 2018, earlier than then 2019 prediction ...

Bloomberg South African banks are preparing for the worst when it comes to the threat of another downgrade of the country’s debt. “FirstRand anticipated the downgrades since 2015 and has been working on a number of proactive strategies to mitigate the impact,” said Andries du Toit, the treasurer at Johannesburg-based FirstRand Ltd., the country’s second-biggest bank by assets. The measures ...

Bloomberg China’s plan to ease foreign-ownership limits on financial firms drew praise from IMF chief Christine Lagarde, who described the move as a “very positive development.” The partial removal of barriers “is an indication of two things: openness and also better strength and confidence in their own system,” the International Monetary Fund managing-director said in an interview in Danang, Vietnam. ...

Bloomberg Mizuho Financial Group Inc.’s profit fell and the Japanese bank offered a bleak assessment of the long-term outlook, confirming it will eliminate thousands of jobs to cut costs. The nation’s third-biggest lender will shed 19,000 positions — about a quarter of its workforce — in the next 10 years, it said in a statement, confirming recent media reports. Lending ...

Bloomberg Australia’s central bank used its Statement on Monetary Policy to flesh out its consistent recent view of accelerating growth and sluggish inflation, suggesting interest rates will stay at a record-low 1.5 percent. Underlying inflation forecasts revised slightly lower for 2018 and cut by half percentage point for 2019, mainly to allow for upcoming reweighting of CPI. “The assessment of ...