Banking

  Bloomberg PPC Ltd is in the final stages of negotiating a 2 billion rand (SU$132 million) bridging guarantee facility, seeking to shore up its balance sheet after a credit-rating cut and warnings of a possible liquidity squeeze. South Africa’s biggest listed cement maker is also working on a plan to raise 3 billion rand to 4 billion rand and ...

  Bloomberg Banks took 2.46 billion pounds (US$3.5 billion) in the first of three extra liquidity operations the Bank of England is holding this month to shore up funding as the UK considers its future in the European Union. Governor Mark Carney is offering the cash — in exchange for collateral — as a precaution to help ensure the smooth ...

  Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. has joined USA rivals including Bank of America Corp and USA Bancorp in letting customers transfer money between the lenders in real time, challenging ventures including PayPal Holdings Inc’s Venmo. JPMorgan, whose Chase QuickPay product handled US$20 billion in peer-to-peer transfers last year, began offering the service after customers requested it, said Barry Sommers, ...

  Bloomberg If Thomas Jordan finds himself in the midst of a foreign-exchange tsunami this month, it won’t be of his own making. In January 2015, the Swiss National Bank shook markets when it gave up its cap on the franc. Now central bankers the world over are casting a nervous eye toward London amid fear the UK’s departure from ...

  Emirates Business China’s central bank will keep in close communication with the International Monetary Fund on key topics centered around the global and Chinese economies, according to People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan. Zhou made the remarks in a meeting with IMF Deputy Managing Director David Lipton in Beijing, according to a statement released on the central bank’s ...

    BLOOMBERG Qatar National Bank SAQ, the country’s biggest bank, raised 10 billion riyals (US$2.75 billion) from capital-boosting perpetual notes in the single largest such issue in the Middle East and North Africa. The privately placed Tier I notes will help strengthen the group’s capital adequacy ratios and support growth across the group, the Doha-based lender said in an ...

  BERLIN / Bloomberg Once upon a time, the euro had aspirations to challenge the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency of choice. Instead, the common European currency is losing favour as a store of value. And as European banks scale back their trading activities, the euro’s role on the global stage is likely to diminish further. Almost a ...

  Bloomberg Bill Winters found more than just bad loans when he took over Standard Chartered Plc. He says he uncovered a culture where a few senior managers flouted ethics rules for personal gain and considered themselves ‘above the law.’ The lender is cracking down after ‘recent transgressions’ concerning some employees’ outside business interests, close financial dealings with co-workers and ...

  AFP Will he stay or will he go? That’s the question gripping India as speculation whirls about the future of central bank chief Raghuram Rajan, dubbed ‘rock star’ and ‘James Bond’. Rajan’s three-year term as Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor ends in September and the Indian media is abuzz with predictions about whether he will be given a ...

  Bloomberg Brazil antitrust regulators approved Banco Bradesco SA’s acquisition of the local unit of HSBC Holdings Plc, adding a restriction that the buyer refrain from additional purchases for 30 months. Bradesco will also have to improve quality control, invest in worker training and disclose to its clients the local law that allows customers to switch banks, Cade, the antitrust ...