Banking

  Bloomberg Kenya’s central bank is evaluating more than five offers from potential local and foreign suitors for Chase Bank Kenya Ltd., which was placed into receivership last week, Governor Patrick Njoroge said. The nation’s regulators were forced to step in with emergency support to stem depositor panic after the collapse last week of Chase Bank, the third lender to ...

  BLOOMBERG The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) weakened the daily yuan reference rate by the most in three months after the dollar strengthened. The central bank set the daily fixing of the local currency at 6.4891 to the dollar on Thursday, the lowest level in more than two weeks. The yuan in Shanghai fell 0.1 percent in a third ...

  Bloomberg Hungary’s central bank will review whether to remove incentives it has provided for commercial banks to buy government debt after yields plunged to record lows and government foreign-currency debt trail off. The National Bank of Hungary will reassess the need to continue providing interest-rate swap facilities to banks, Vice Governor Marton Nagy said in an article on Portfolio ...

WASHINGTON / Reuters The European Central Bank (ECB) is unhappy with the US dollar’s recent fall but accepts it as a natural consequence of the Federal Reserve’s cautious economic outlook and sees no reason to act to weaken the euro, three ECB sources said. A weaker dollar — it has shed 4 percent against the euro since the beginning of ...

  Tokyo / Bloomberg The top executive of Japan’s biggest bank delivered a rare criticism of the central bank, saying its negative interest-rate policy has contributed to anxiety among households and companies and prolonging it may weaken financial institutions. “Both households and businesses have become skeptical about the effectiveness of policy measures to address the current economic problems,” Nobuyuki Hirano, ...

  Reuters Japan’s economy is expected to have narrowly avoided another recession at the start of 2016 but economists in a poll also predicted that growth and inflation will remain tepid this year, held back in part by the recent sharp rise in the yen. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) surprised in a split January decision to implement a tiny ...

  Reuters Bank Muscat, Oman’s largest lender, posted a 1.1 percent increase in first-quarter net profit on Thursday, according to a bourse statement, on the back of rising income from loans, fees and commission. The bank made a profit of 43.8 million rials ($113.8 million) in the three-month period ending on March 31, up from 43.3 million rials a year ...

  Reuters Saudi Hollandi Bank, Saudi Arabia’s oldest lender, posted a 5.1 percent fall in first-quarter net profit on Thursday as income from trading, fees and commissions dipped. The lender made a profit of 511.5 million riyals ($136.5 million) in the three months to end-March, down from 538.9 million riyals in the corresponding quarter of 2015, according to a bourse ...

  Reuters Britain’s Legal & General Group PLC and Swiss Re AG are among firms said to be weighing bids for Deutsche Bank AG’s Abbey Life Assurance Co, sources familiar with the matter said. In September, it was reported that the German lender was exploring the possible sale of its British insurance unit Abbey Life. Phoenix Group Holdings, Britain’s largest ...

  Washington / AFP The World Bank and the new China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), originally seen as possible rivals, joined hands with an agreement to co-finance projects. The two development banks signed off on a framework for working together on infrastructure programmes over the coming year which will give the World Bank some crucial oversight on how projects are ...