Banking

  Bloomberg A new row is brewing between Kenyan banks and parliament after a lawmaker proposed placing restrictions on deposits by state-owned companies, months after the state imposed a cap on lending rates. Kimani Ichungw’a, vice chairman of the Public Investments Committee, drafted a bill seeking to bar state-owned corporations from investing or depositing public funds with lenders in which ...

  Reuters Turkey’s lira was little changed on Tuesday, with investors holding back from taking big bets ahead of a central bank meeting later in the day seen as a critical test of its monetary policy credibility. The lira has fallen some 8 percent so far this year, making it one of the worst performing major emerging market currencies. Investors ...

  Bloomberg Bond investors are snapping up Canadian bank debt that’s likely to start disappearing under new government rules expected early this year to protect taxpayers from having to bail out a failing financial firm. About C$100 billion ($75 billion) in deposit notes outstanding — senior unsecured bank debt valued for its credit quality, liquidity, and widespread inclusion in portfolios ...

  DUBAI / Reuters National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) , the Gulf Arab state’s largest commercial lender, posted a 40 percent rise in fourth-quarter net profit, according to Reuters’ calculations, as the bank continued to benefit from government spending. The bank made a net profit of 75.9 million dinars ($248.9 million) in the three months to Dec. 31, compared with ...

  Bloomberg Equity strategists are yet again predicting that this will finally be the year European profits deliver. This time, it’s Citigroup Inc.’s Jonathan Stubbs forecasting the region’s earnings will jump at least 10 percent to end a three-year dry spell. His bullishness on Europe is reminiscent of early 2015 and 2016, when strategists and investors doubled down on the ...

  Bloomberg China’s central bank added funds to the financial system through open-market operations, after injecting a record amount of cash last week and offering liquidity support to some lenders. The monetary authority added a net 60 billion yuan ($8.7 billion) using 14-day and 28-day reverse-repurchase agreements. There are no contracts maturing. The People’s Bank of China pumped in a ...

  Bloomberg Angolan banks are appealing to the government to help put together a bailout package to protect account holders as lenders reel from low oil prices that make up almost all of the nation’s foreign-exchange earnings. Financial assistance could come from the administration of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos or be shared by all of the southwest African country’s ...

  Bloomberg While Scandinavia waits for its regulators to finalize rules on bonds that are supposed to absorb losses if issuing banks get into trouble, Societe Generale SA decided to lead the way and sell its first senior bail-in-able notes in a Nordic currency. France’s second-largest bank by market value is issuing senior non-preferred notes in Swedish kronor after already ...

  Bloomberg Saudi Arabia central bank Governor Ahmed Alkholifey said a cash crunch that squeezed commercial lenders last year is over and that he’s open to more foreign financial institutions operating in the biggest Arab economy. The Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority sees no need for further steps to boost banking liquidity, Alkholifey said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG sought an unusual provision in its $7.2 billion mortgage-bond settlement with the US government, and seems to have won it: the bank can pay down part of its penalty by lending money to fund managers. As part of the agreement, Germany’s largest bank has to provide $4.1 billion of relief for mortgage borrowers. Other lenders ...