Banking

  BLOOMBERG Europe’s stocks are far from cheap. That’s according to Robert Parkes, head of European equity strategy at HSBC Holdings Plc, who says the market is “fully valued and bordering on expensive.” To illustrate, he pointed to the MSCI Europe Index’s price-earnings ratio, which at about 20 times reported profit is near the highest since 2004. That’s even after ...

  Bloomberg China’s central bank boosted the supply of cash in the financial system, helping push the benchmark money-market rate down from a three-month high. The People’s Bank of China sold 180 billion yuan ($27 billion) of seven-day reverse-repurchase agreements, which inject funds into the banking system. That’s the biggest single-day offering of the contracts since June 29. This comes ...

  Bloomberg Bank regulators from Tokyo to Frankfurt are joining forces to resist a US-backed push for stiffer capital rules that could heap billions of dollars of new requirements on lenders. Highlighting the stakes, top regulators from Europe, Japan and India are pressing their case in public, shedding light on divisions in the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision as it ...

  Bloomberg Commerzbank AG dropped the most in a month after Germany’s second-largest bank disclosed an unexpected drop in a key measure of financial strength in the second quarter, hurt by higher operational risks such as legal expenses. The common equity Tier 1 ratio declined to 11.5 percent at the end of June, based on preliminary figures, from 12 percent ...

  BLOOMBERG Barclays Plc trader fired amid the foreign-exchange market manipulation scandal told a London court that a senior bank executive said “life isn’t fair” before firing him. Justin Bull, the bank’s former chief operating officer, mocked Chris Ashton during his April 2015 disciplinary hearing, Ashton said in a witness statement made public Tuesday. During the hearing, Ashton said it ...

  Bloomberg Some of the world’s biggest currency traders are betting that the yen can withstand almost anything Haruhiko Kuroda comes up with on Friday. Insight Investment Management Ltd., a unit of Bank of New York Mellon Corp., is “close to flat” on the yen. JPMorgan Chase & Co. says the currency could surge toward 102 per dollar on Friday, ...

  BLOOMBERG HSBC Global Asset Management is sticking with its bet on Indian sovereign bonds as Asia’s highest yields help drive the strongest foreign demand for rupee debt since October. A pickup in monsoon rains has eased inflation concern and the Reserve Bank of India’s cash injections have improved liquidity, adding to the case for favoring the nation’s debt, according ...

  Bloomberg Itau Unibanco Holding SA, Banco Bradesco SA and Brazil’s other major banks are expected to post their first quarter-over-quarter decline in bad-loan provisions in at least a year when they report results in coming days. The good news will probably be short-lived. “The provision decrease doesn’t mean a credit-quality improvement,” Andre Riva, an analyst at GBM Grupo Bursatil ...

  Bloomberg The Group of 20 meeting in China added to the chorus of voices calling for more fiscal measures to boost growth, which could have important implications for asset prices if carried out successfully. With markets accustomed to a world of ever more innovative monetary policy, analysts from Deutsche Bank to Morgan Stanley say such a shift could in ...

  Bloomberg Instances like the London Interbank Offered Rate better known as Libor are enough to make those who remember the 2008 financial crisis shudder with apprehension. Back then, bank borrowing costs ticked up as investors fretted over the soundness of lending unsecured short-term money to potentially troubled financial institutions. Nowadays, though there’s plenty of handwringing about the state of ...