Reuters Kuwait’s Burgan Bank, the country’s third largest lender by assets, is in early discussions with banks for the refinancing of a $350 million loan due in December, sources familiar with the matter said on Sunday. The bank raised the original debt facility in 2015 with a group of seven banks, including regional and international lenders. The new loan would ...
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RBNZ reform could lower rates, says finance minister
Bloomberg Reforming the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s monetary policy mandate could potentially result in lower interest rates, the new finance minister said. Requiring the central bank to target full employment as well as price stability when making rate decisions will ensure its objectives are more aligned with the well-being of New Zealanders, Grant Robertson said in a television interview ...
Read More »Wells Fargo adds $1bn in third quarter to possible legal cost as woes mount
Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. added $1 billion in the third quarter to what it says the bank may face in possible legal expenses. Legal costs could potentially be $3.3 billion more than what the San Francisco-based bank has reserved, Wells Fargo said in a regulatory filing. While that figure was unchanged from the previous three-month period, it constitutes a ...
Read More »Key central banks begin reversing emergency stimulus
Bloomberg It was President Donald Trump who dominated the headlines in monetary policy over the past 10 days with his choice of Jerome Powell to chair the US Federal Reserve. Yet the club of central bank chiefs the American is set to join has been making plenty of news. The Fed, now helmed by Janet Yellen, left itself on course ...
Read More »BOE chief tethers rate path to Brexit
Bloomberg Mark Carney is tying the Bank of England’s next interest-rate shift to the success of Brexit negotiations. After raising interest rates for the first time in more than a decade, the governor said the pending divorce from the European Union is the main risk to the outlook, aggravating existing weaknesses that have hobbled the economy and holding back potential ...
Read More »BofA inches closer to US research fees as MiFID conflicts loom
Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. made the legal leap required to untangle what US clients are charged for research and trading, bringing to America a version of the changes being forced on markets in Europe. Its Merrill Lynch unit added the firm’s research department to an existing investment adviser registration late on Thursday, according to a document on the US ...
Read More »Italians’ dwindling trust in banks comes to fore as vote nears
Bloomberg Italian bank executives and central bankers, take note: people trust you less and less. Just 16 percent of Italians have confidence in the country’s lenders, down from an already meager 17 percent in June, according to a poll by the SWG research group of Trieste. Only 24 percent trust the Bank of Italy, plunging from 36 percent in June. ...
Read More »Nordea owner says banks can learn after job cuts
Bloomberg One week after Nordea Bank AB said it will cut 6,000 jobs in a digital bet, a key investor says the rest of the industry would do well to watch and learn. Sampo Oyj, Nordea’s biggest owner with about one-fifth of its stock, says digital adequacy is overtaking capital adequacy as a top consideration for investors. “In the Nordics, ...
Read More »PBOC offers 404bn yuan loans in move seen steadying market
Bloomberg China’s central bank moved to stabilize money supply, capping a week that began with a bond rout and more than 1 trillion yuan ($151 billion) of loans due to mature. The People’s Bank of China offered 404 billion yuan of one-year funds under the Medium-Term Lending Facility, compared with 207 billion yuan of maturities, according to a statement on ...
Read More »BNP Paribas battles hard to beat trading slump
Bloomberg BNP Paribas SA is finding it harder to evade the trading slump that’s engulfing rivals. After emerging almost unscathed from the period of low volatility that weighed down Wall Street firms and European investment banks earlier this year, the Paris-based lender posted a bigger-than-expected 17 percent drop in trading revenue in the third quarter, or 15 percent on a ...
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