Banking

Bloomberg Sagging economic growth in India is complicating efforts to clean up a mountain of bad debt at the nation’s banks. Loans worth Rs17,00,000 crore ($26 billion) have been withdrawn in total since the 2001 inception of the corporate debt restructuring (CDR) mechanism through to the end of August, according to the latest data from the agency that brokers agreements ...

Bloomberg Some European Central Bank (ECB) policy makers see room for little more than 200 billion euros ($235 billion) of purchases under the institution’s bond-buying programme next year, according to central-bank officials familiar with the matter. The ECB is likely to run out of available debt under current rules at just over 2.5 trillion euros, the officials said, asking not ...

Bloomberg Bitcoin bubble or just the beginning? Or both? Those are the questions being asked on Wall Street to Main Street after the digital currency breached $5,000 for the first time, pushing this year’s gains to more than fivefold. As recently as December, bitcoin was trading at less than $1,000. Since then, it has dodged everything from tightening regulations, feuding ...

Bloomberg Kenya’s central bank may slightly lower its 2017 economic growth forecast to reflect uncertainty from this month’s unexpected presidential election do-over, said Governor Patrick Njoroge. “The growth rate won’t be as strong as we expected, but I don’t think we can say that we’ve gone over the precipice,” Njoroge said in an interview in Washington on Saturday, where he ...

Bloomberg Mark Carney is heading into a crucial week in the countdown to a possible Bank of England (BOE) rate increase in early November. After the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings where most central bankers fretted about weak inflation even amid robust global growth, the governor returns to an economy that’s almost the mirror opposite. While Brexit is weighing on ...

Bloomberg Philippine central bank Governor Nestor Espenilla said contained inflation means there isn’t a need to increase interest rates in the near term. “Right now there is no need to move policy rates looking at the inflation outlook,” Espenilla said in Washington where he was attending the annual International Monetary Fund meetings. “It might be too much of an anticipation ...

Bloomberg With the European Central Bank’s (ECB) next policy update less than two weeks away, the institution’s chief is expressing both confidence and patience about achieving its inflation goal. “We are confident that as the conditions will continue to improve, the inflation rate will gradually converge in a self-sustained manner, as we’ve defined many times, and in a durable way ...

DUBAI / Reuters Saudi Arabia’s central bank may raise the maximum loan-to-deposit ratio for commercial banks if that is needed to help the economy, central bank governor Ahmed al-Kholifey told Al Arabiya television. Kholifey was speaking on the sidelines of meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington. The central bank last raised the ratio in February 2016, to ...

Bloomberg Barclays Plc will need to defend its advantages in the payments business from encroachment by technology companies including Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc., according to Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley. “There are some tectonic shifts going on, driven by tech and the geopolitical environment,” Staley said during a panel discussion on Saturday at the annual meeting of the Institute ...

Bloomberg Thailand’s already “very accommodative” monetary policy is fueling robust growth that’s spreading across the economy, said Bank of Thailand (BoT) Governor Veerathai Santiprabhob. The outlook comes as an exports revival in Thailand gains momentum despite a recent rise in the nation’s currency, the baht. Better demand from key trading partners is helping to offset strength in the exchange rate, ...