Banking

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 ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc Chairman Mark Tucker has met with shareholders and discussed takeovers of US credit-card businesses in his first month in office, the Sunday Times reported. Investors are said to be wary of the plans given the retrenchment by the world’s largest banks in recent years, the newspaper said, citing people it didn’t identify. People linked to the ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. investment bankers may be coming to an airport near you. Dealmakers at Wall Street’s top-ranked merger firm are fanning out across the US and Western Europe as part of a new plan to drum up additional business. They’re targeting smaller companies, many in America’s hinterlands, ingratiating themselves to a tier of clients often neglected by ...

Bloomberg Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. are finding patience pays off in China. The trio now have an advantage over some of their largest Wall Street rivals after officials in charge of the world’s No. 2 economy promised to let foreigners take majority stakes in securities firms there — raising limits that had long frustrated US ...

Bloomberg South Africa has limited space for counter-cyclical monetary policy to support economic expansion because inflation risks have increased, central bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago said. The balance of risks for growth in consumer prices is “on the upside,” with the rand weakening against the dollar, a higher oil price, and a chance that power prices will increase, he said in ...

Bloomberg Nazir Razak, chairman of CIMB Group Holdings Bhd. and brother of Malaysia’s prime minister, is helping start a regional private equity fund that will seek as much as $1 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said. Nazir will keep his role at CIMB, Malaysia’s second-largest bank, while acting as one of the fund’s five partners, according to the ...

Bloomberg A group of companies linked to South Africa’s politically connected Gupta family said the country’s banking regulator encouraged lenders to shut their accounts, broadening a battle to retain the last of their banking services. The 20 businesses, which are suing Bank of Baroda’s local unit to keep their accounts open, have now included Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago and ...