Banking

Bloomberg The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) says economic conditions at home and abroad ‘had been more positive since 2016,’ according to minutes of this month’s policy meeting where interest rates were left unchanged. National accounts indicated private non-mining business investment increased in the June quarter to be almost 10% higher than at the start of 2016. Public consumption had …

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc’s former head of currency trading in London made at least $500,000 in commissions by front-running a multi-billion-dollar deal that betrayed the bank’s duty to its client, according to US prosecutors. The allegations, made in court documents handed out at the start of a two-day hearing, form part of the US government’s petition to extradite Stuart Scott …

Bloomberg Some Qatari banks are becoming less willing to sell dollars to foreign lenders amid a lingering regional standoff with a Saudi-led alliance, according to people familiar with the matter. Foreign exchange activity between local and international banks is almost at a standstill, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. The central bank is …

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 Loans worth Rs17,00,000 crore ($26 billion) have been withdrawn in total since the 2001 inception of the corporate debt restructuring (CDR) mechanism through to the end of August, according to the latest data from the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 …