Banking

  BLOOMBERG Mario Draghi’s insistence that his stimulus programme is only half done brings with it a worrying thought. What if its best effects are already spent anyway? At least four times at Thursday’s press meet in Vienna, the European Central Bank president emphasised how policy makers need to see the ‘full impact’ and must ‘focus on implementation’ of their ...

  Bloomberg Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard said a ‘sobering’ US employment report suggested the labour market has slowed, as she continued to warn against moving too quickly to raise interest rates. “In this environment, prudent risk management implies there is a benefit to waiting for additional data to provide confidence that domestic activity has rebounded strongly and reassurance that ...

  AFP The European Central Bank held key interest rates at historic lows Thursday, but made no announcement regarding Greece despite speculation it may offer a helping hand to its cash-strapped banks. Meeting in the Austrian capital instead of its usual home venue in Frankfurt, the ECB’s decision-making governing council voted not to alter borrowing costs, which have been at ...

  AP A US congressional committee is investigating how hackers managed to divert US$101 million from Bank of Bangladesh accounts held at the Federal Reserve in New York. The February theft led the Bangladesh central bank’s chairman to resign, and added to worries about the security of online bank data. This week, the Science Committee in the US House of ...

  REUTERS Kuwait’s Gulf Bank said a court ruled in favour of the lender in a 55.3 million dinar (US$182.99 million) dispute with The Cube Group to auction assets, according to a bourse filing. This is to go towards covering part of its debt to the lender, Gulf Bank said in the statement. The court ruling is final, the statement ...

  Bloomberg Brazil’s state development bank BNDES will sell equity assets and utilize concessions and privatisations as it seeks to attract the private investment needed to pull Latin America’s largest economy out of recession, according to the bank’s new president. Maria Silvia Bastos Marques took over as head of the bank known as BNDES, saying she will personally oversee the ...

  BLOOMBERG Australia’s securities regulator is set to start civil legal proceedings against National Australia Bank Ltd. for allegedly manipulating the nation’s benchmark swap rate, according to a person familiar with the matter. It will be the third such legal action in a more-than three-year investigation by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission into alleged manipulation of the bank-bill swap ...

  Bloomberg Japan for years has been renowned for having the world’s largest government debt load. No longer. That’s if you consider how the effective public borrowing burden is plunging — by one estimate as much as the equivalent of 15 percentage points of gross domestic product a year, putting it on track toward a more manageable level. Accounting for ...

  Bloomberg China’s central bank is expanding the fight to monitor and control risks emerging in the burgeoning market for loosely-regulated shadow lending. The People’s Bank of China has started collecting data from the murky world of online financing, in which firms make loans for everything from weddings to mining projects. It’s a growing part of a shadow banking market ...

  AFP The head of the world’s biggest bank by assets, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), is retiring, according to a statement, amid flat profit growth for the massive lender. Jiang Jianqing, 63, is leaving his post as chairman and will be replaced by current president and vice chairman Yi Huiman, ICBC said in a statement to the ...