Banking

Bloomberg Mergers and acquisitions may be headed for a slowdown amid high valuations and an uncertain outlook around monetary policy, says William Vereker at UBS Group AG. “I look at record-high valuations across many exchanges, I look at a very liquid backdrop with the ongoing easing of monetary policy, you’ve got an uncertain outlook on interest rates,” said Vereker, global ...

Bloomberg The reshuffle at the top of two of China’s largest state-controlled banks is the latest phase of a management change for the country’s $40 trillion financial industry, as the government seeks to restrain any turbulence ahead of a twice-a-decade meeting of the ruling Communist Party. Tian Guoli, formerly chairman of Bank of China Ltd., has been named as the ...

Bloomberg South Africa’s central bank is under increasing political pressure to maintain “expansionary” monetary policy, Moody’s Investors Service said as the regulator prepares to challenge an instruction to change its mandate. The High Court in Pretoria on Tuesday will hear the Reserve Bank’s application to review the Public Protector’s order that lawmakers must change the constitution to make the central ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc faces as much as $300 million in legal and relocation fees as it prepares to move 1,000 staff to Paris, in one of the first indications of the cost of Brexit to the UK’s financial industry. Europe’s biggest lender took a $4 million charge in the second-quarter for “costs associated with the UK’s exit from the ...

Bloomberg Italian economist Mario Draghi kept expectations low for inflation this summer, and July’s number is proving him right. Consumer-price growth in the euro area stayed at 1.3 percent — enough to argue that deflation risks have disappeared, but too little to meet the European Central Bank president’s goal of just under 2 percent. While it confirms Draghi’s prediction that ...

Bloomberg Turns out that China’s new Bond Connect with Hong Kong isn’t just good for foreigners. Offshore Chinese money is using the channel to bring money back home, taking advantage of opportunities in domestic credit products. With the Chinese yuan’s exchange rate rising in recent months against the dollar — and likely to stay stable with a critical Communist Party ...

Bloomberg After posting a second quarter of revenue growth and with plans to return another $2 billion of cash to investors, departing boss Stuart Gulliver’s six-year turnaround of HSBC Holdings Plc might finally be gathering momentum. Adjusted revenue and pretax profit rose 4 percent and 13 percent respectively, beating analysts’ estimates, as the bank continued to pump capital into better-returning ...

Bloomberg Italy took the final steps to revive Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, setting the price for its portion of the aid package needed to keep the world’s oldest bank in business. The government will pay 6.49 euros per share as part of the bank’s capital raising, according to a statement from the lender. Italy earlier this week ...

Bloomberg Mark Carney signaled in June that a Bank of England rate increase may be approaching. Economists doubt it is here just yet. The governor, overseeing an economy that slowed sharply in the first half, will lower growth projections for the next two years when he presents the central bank’s latest forecasts next week, according to economists. The inflation outlook ...

Bloomberg BNP Paribas SA is showing it’s still possible to build a big investment bank franchise from Europe. France’s largest lender outshone Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG and much of Wall Street for another quarter, posting a standout performance in equity derivatives to help drive better-than-expected profit. Among bright spots: Equity and prime services revenue jumped 26 percent amid surging demand ...