Banking

  Bloomberg The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) used open-market operations to inject the most funds in two weeks, helping meet a seasonal spike in demand for cash that also saw the central bank provide two rounds of medium-term loans within a week. The PBOC auctioned 90 billion yuan ($14 billion) of seven-day reverse-repurchase agreements on Tuesday, the most since ...

  New York / AFP Goldman Sachs reported a sharp decline in first-quarter earnings, but gave a fairly bullish outlook for the mergers and acquisitions business now that financial markets have stabilised. Earnings for the quarter ending March 31 were $1.2 billion, down 56.3 percent from the year-ago period. Revenues sank 40.3 percent to $6.3 billion. Nearly all of the big ...

  Tokyo / Reuters Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said inflation could be affected if the yen continued to rise excessively, leading to further easing measures to meet the central bank’s price target, the Wall Street Journal reported. Kuroda also told the paper that the BOJ was not targetting the exchange rate but that he would continue to ...

  Seoul / Reuters South Korea’s central bank kept interest rates untouched on Tuesday for a 10th straight month, and its governor stressed that the current rate level supports economic growth, although a lowered growth forecast for this year kept expectations of a rate cut alive. The Bank of Korea (BOK) committee held its base rate steady at 1.50 percent, ...

  Bloomberg The strengthening krona may force Sweden’s central bank to add stimulus again as criticism mounts that its unprecedented policy moves are threatening stability in the largest Nordic economy. While all 20 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg predict that the main rate will be kept unchanged at a record low of minus 0.5 percent, the Riksbank may extend its government ...

  Reuters Samba Financial Group, Saudi Arabia’s third-largest bank by assets, reported a 1.4 percent drop in first-quarter net profit on Tuesday, in line with analyst forecasts. The bank made a profit of 1.26 billion riyals ($336.1 million) in the three months to March 31, down from 1.28 billion riyals in the same period a year earlier, it said in ...

  Bloomberg Citigroup Inc. said it has named Gerald Keefe as its Hong Kong-based head of corporate banking for the Asia-Pacific region, a newly created role. Keefe, currently head of corporate banking for Japan, will take on responsibilities for Citigroup bankers in the region dealing with companies, financial institutions and public-sector entities, according to a press release. Agnes Liew, another ...

  Moscow / Reuters The New Development Bank (NDB), formed by the BRICS group of emerging nations, has approved its first loans — $811 million for renewable energy projects in Brazil, China, India and South Africa, Russian news agencies reported last week. The BRICS bank, with authorised capital of $100 billion, started work last year on funding initiatives for infrastructure ...

  MILAN / REUTERS Italy has dubbed its new bank bailout fund Atlas, after the mythical Greek titan, because it is meant to hold up the sky above the nation’s lenders. But some of the fund’s own investors doubt that it can do the job. The 5-6 billion euro ($5.7-6.8 billion) fund was hailed by the government as an industry-led ...

  MADRID / REUTERS Spain’s Caixabank said on Monday it would launch a full takeover bid for the 56 percent of Portuguese lender Banco BPI that it does not already own for 1.113 euros ($1.26) per share. The offer was dependent on acceptance topping 50 percent and the Portuguese bank eliminating a 20 percent shareholder rights limitation, the Spanish bank ...