Bloomberg The Turkish central bank’s thinly veiled pledge to take action to stem the lira’s bought only a short reprieve before the slump continued. By just after 3 p.m. on Tuesday in Istanbul, the lira was trading down 1.7 percent against the dollar — weaker than its level prior to the central bank’s statement about an hour earlier and ...
Read More »Banking
China’s biggest money fund braces for more liquidity shocks
Bloomberg China will face more frequent liquidity shocks this year, according to the manager of the nation’s biggest money-market fund, which plans to hold extra cash to protect against the risk of rising redemptions. The government’s efforts to curb risk in the financial system and support the sliding yuan are likely to ‘over-stretch a rope that’s already tight,’ said ...
Read More »Turkish lira weakens amidst constitutional debate
ISTANBUL / AP Turkey’s currency has weakened to an all-time low against the dollar as parliament debates constitutional amendments that would hand the president sweeping executive powers and, critics say, limit checks and balances. The value of the Turkish lira has dropped nearly seven percent against the dollar since the start of the year. On Tuesday, it was trading ...
Read More »HSBC to advise Saudi on ‘privatisation’ of school buildings
RIYADH / Reuters Saudi Arabia has hired HSBC as financial advisor for its plans to privatise construction and management of school buildings, as it seeks to cut state spending in an era of low oil prices, a Saudi executive said on Tuesday. Tatweer Buildings Co, a state-owned firm affiliated with the Ministry of Education, aims to begin offering public-private ...
Read More »Hunger for Aussie bank bonds shows few signs of slowing
Bloomberg The appetite for Australian banks to fund in the local bond market shows little sign of abating, with Commonwealth Bank of Australia selling A$2.65 billion ($1.95 billion) of notes less than two weeks into the new year. The deal is the earliest benchmark-sized local transaction from one of the country’s four largest banks since 2009 and follows a ...
Read More »Modi to open 16-storey bourse to rival Singapore, Hong Kong
Bloomberg Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to inaugurate an international exchange in Gujarat state’s new finance zone, seeking to grab some of India’s $48 billion in offshore banking activities from Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong. The India International Exchange, at the bottom of a 16-storey building that dominates the finance zone, will start trading single stock and equity ...
Read More »China reserves slumped $320 billion in 2016 as yuan tumbled
Bloomberg China’s foreign currency holdings fell for a sixth month in December, bringing last year’s drop to $320 billion as the yuan posted its steepest annual slide in more than two decades. Reserves decreased $41.1 billion to a fresh five-year low of $3.01 trillion, the People’s Bank of China said. That was in line with estimates in Bloomberg’s survey ...
Read More »Ex-Barclays trader admits conspiracy to rig currency prices
Bloomberg Jason Katz, a former Barclays Plc currency trader, admitted conspiring to fix prices in the foreign-exchange market, the third individual to be charged and the first to plead guilty in a long-running US criminal investigation into the rigging of currency rates. Katz appeared in Manhattan federal court, where he admitted to participating in a conspiracy with other bankers ...
Read More »Goldman’s call is already being borne out by Lira’s plunge
Bloomberg One of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s out-of-consensus calls for 2017 is already bearing fruit. While big investors are positioned for Turkey to do well, analysts led by Caesar Maasry recommended greater caution in a report — shortly before the lira plunged to a fresh lows against both the US dollar and the euro. The bank’s analysis of actively-managed ...
Read More »DNB to use excess funds to buy back its own shares
Bloomberg Norway’s biggest bank, DNB ASA, has more capital than it needs and will probably start using the excess funds to buy back its own shares. After topping the European Banking Authority’s resilience score (DNB’s capital reserves were hardly affected in the stress tests’ ‘adverse’ scenario), the Oslo-based lender is now attracting investor interest as analysts predict shareholder rewards ...
Read More »