Bloomberg The Philippine central bank isn’t in a race to raise interest rates, incoming governor Nestor Espenilla said, despite economists’ predictions the country will be the first in Southeast Asia to do so. “It’s not a race to raise interest rates,†Espenilla, 58, deputy governor in charge of bank supervision, said in an interview. “Is it time to raise interest ...
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Brazil’s ‘iron lady’ quits as head of BNDES
Bloomberg Maria Silvia Bastos resigned as the head of Brazil’s state development bank (BNDES) amid a corruption scandal engulfing both the institution and President Michel Temer. The BNDES in a statement cited personal reasons for Bastos’ decision, without elaborating. Brazil’s currency and the Ibovespa stock index trimmed gains. Paulo Rabello Castro, an economist in charge of the national statistics agency ...
Read More »Barclays trader fired amid foreign exchange probe
Bloomberg A Barclays Plc trader fired amid a global probe into foreign-exchange market manipulation lost his lawsuit against the bank after a judge ruled the lender was right to dismiss him for revealing confidential information to rivals and using sexually explicit, racist language in online chats. Barclays suspended Jack Murray in October 2013, shortly after regulators began probing banks suspected ...
Read More »Sberbank records $2.98bn profit as lending margin widens
Bloomberg The Russian state-controlled behemoth reported net income of 167.8 billion rubles ($2.98 billion), beating estimates of 159 billion rubles by 10 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Earnings were boosted by a stronger net interest margin as the Russian central bank moved slowly to bring down borrowing costs. It was the third record profit in the last five quarters. Sberbank Chief ...
Read More »Higher yields could trigger new debt concerns: ECB
Bloomberg The European Central Bank said debt-sustainability concerns have risen in the past six months amid a potential increase in yields and political uncertainty in some countries. “Risks to financial stability stemming from financial markets remain significant,†the Frankfurt-based institution said in its Financial Stability Review. An abrupt bond-market repricing could “materialize via spillovers from higher yields in advanced economies, ...
Read More »IDB to revamp and decentralise operations
SARAJEVO / Reuters The Islamic Development Bank (IDB), the largest development organisation in the Muslim world, plans to revamp its operations, including a shift away from small-scale capital interventions to more sustainable, grassroot-level support. The non-profit group has extended $86.1 billion in financing in the last ten years for energy, transportation, water and sanitation projects. Bangladesh, Pakistan and Egypt are ...
Read More »Goldman Sachs sues two ex-officials over client poaching
Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sued two former vice presidents in the bank’s private wealth management unit in Chicago, claiming they poached clients for their own new investment advisory business. The two men, Jeffrey Friedstein and Joseph Page, gave notice on Friday they were quitting, Goldman Sachs said in a complaint filed Monday in New York state court. The bank ...
Read More »Saxo Bank’s new portal to boost ‘open banking’
Emirates Business Saxo Bank announces the release of its new developer portal on Wednesday. The portal provides technical documentation, reference guides, sample code and interactive tools for many of the technologies which in combination underpin Saxo’s Open Banking initiative. Saxo’s Open Banking strategy is built on the premise that going forward an increasingly broader range of partnerships and collaborations will ...
Read More »HSBC bids for more share in Canadian market
Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc is getting aggressive in Canada — and one needs to look no further than its latest mortgage rate for proof of broader ambitions. HSBC Canada is offering five-year fixed-term mortgages at 2.39 percent, undercutting the lowest discretionary rates at the largest domestic lenders including Toronto-Dominion Bank (TDB) and Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). “I want to ...
Read More »Bundesbank’s Dombret says Brexit likely to be ‘very hard’
Bloomberg The UK’s departure from the European Union is unlikely to go smoothly, according to Bundesbank board member Andreas Dombret. “It doesn’t look like a soft Brexit to me at all,†Dombret told David Ingles in a Bloomberg TV interview in Tokyo on Tuesday. “It looks like either a hard Brexit or a very hard Brexit.†Positions on both sides ...
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