Banking

  Washington / AFP JP Morgan Chase has agreed to pay $264 million to settle a foreign bribery case dubbed the “princelings case” in which the bank gave prized jobs to friends and relatives of Chinese officials, US officials announced. The multinational bank, now the world’s largest by market capitalization, admitted to taking in more than $100 million after hiring ...

  Bloomberg A contentious reform of international bank capital standards is going down to the wire, as regulators including the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank try to bridge a wide gap on key issues before the end of the year. At issue is the way banks measure the risk of mortgages, corporate loans and even the threat ...

  Bloomberg Indonesia’s central bank kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged after six cuts this year, seeking to calm financial markets in the wake of Donald Trump’s upset victory in the US presidential election. Governor Agus Martowardojo and his board held the seven-day reverse repurchase rate at 4.75 percent on Thursday, in line with the forecasts of all but three ...

  New Delhi / AFP India announced new measures on Thursday to allow farmers and marrying couples to withdraw more money from banks, as frustration mounted over a cash crisis triggered by the withdrawal of all high-value notes. The shock move last week, which saw 85 percent of the cash in circulation suddenly withdrawn, has led to huge queues forming ...

  Bloomberg The European Central Bank’s extraordinary stimulus measures are not intended to be permanent and should be withdrawn as soon as possible, Executive Board member Yves Mersch said. “The size of the purchase program means that will take some time, but a permanent commitment to our bond-buying, for example, would set the wrong incentives for government financing,” Mersch said ...

  Frankfurt am Main / AFP Deutsche Bank intends to claw back millions in bonuses from six former top executives, a German newspaper said on Thursday, as the embattled lender seeks to cut costs and boost its capital cushion. The move would target former CEOs Anshu Jain, Juergen Fitschen and Josef Ackermann as well as three one-time board members, the ...

  Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank (SNB), which has the lowest interest rate among the world’s major central banks, may be done cutting. SNB President Thomas Jordan and his fellow policy makers will keep the deposit rate unchanged at minus 0.75 percent until at least the end of the first quarter of 2019, according to the median forecast in Bloomberg’s ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England (BoE) has been granted the ability to limit borrowing by investors in rental housing, increasing the central bank’s control over the property market. The BoE’s Financial Policy Committee has been given new powers to cap buy-to-let mortgage lending by regulating loan-to-value and interest coverage ratios, the UK Treasury said in a statement. UK benchmark interest ...

  Bloomberg The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is poised to become the latest central bank to test its own digital currency, which it will use in a trial of a blockchain-driven system for interbank payments. The ‘proof-of-concept’ project, which also involves the city’s stock exchange and eight banks, is aimed at simplifying the payments process and reducing transaction costs, ...

  Bloomberg Barclays Bank of Kenya Ltd. became the first of the country’s biggest banks to report a drop in nine-month profit as it tripled loan-loss provisions and bad loans surged. The bank partially owned by Barclays Plc’s Africa unit posted profit of 6.06 billion shillings ($59.5 million) in the nine months through September, compared with 6.4 billion shillings a ...