Banking

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan is reducing the share of funds financial institutions keep at the BOJ that will be subject to the new negative interest rate policy. Enacting a technical adjustment that the central bank indicated was a possibility when it unveiled the new policy in January, the BOJ enlarged the share of new current-account funds that will be ...

Bloomberg Instead of an orderly burial, the wind-down of an Austrian bank is turning into a scene from The Walking Dead. Seven years on from the bailout of Hypo Alpe Aldria Bank, private investors and politicians are still at loggerheads over who should foot the bill. While Hypo Group itself is no more, Heta, the “bad bank” designed to wind ...

Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc is seeking to sell at least $4.4 billion of assets in Asia, people with knowledge of the matter said, as the lender pares its balance sheet after booking record impairments. The London-based bank is speaking with potential buyers for about $1.4 billion of stressed loans made to Indian firms including GMR Infrastructure Ltd., according to the ...

Bloomberg Reserve Bank of India(RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan is going all out to build up the nation’s foreign-exchange reserves as he seeks to augment the rupee’s defenses. The stockpile grew to an unprecedented $359.76 billion in the week to April 1, Reserve Bank of India data showed. The reserves surged as Governor Raghuram Rajan bought dollars to take advantage of ...

Bloomberg The world’s central bankers, already hitting limits of their effectiveness on growth and inflation, are now contending with another risk: that additional stimulus could produce lackluster results and undercut investor confidence. The Bank of Japan’s decision in January to take interest rates negative has sent bond yields tumbling, while doing little to curb a surging yen that’s squeezing the ...

Washington / Reuters The World Bank said on Monday it expects its nonmarket rate lending to top $43 billion in the current fiscal year as developing countries face economic headwinds, bringing its total for the past four years to more than $150 billion. The multilateral lender said its International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and International Development Association (IDA) ...

New Delhi / Bloomberg A panel advising India’s markets regulator found evidence that high-frequency traders gained unfair access to the nation’s biggest stock exchange, prompting two of the country’s largest brokerage associations to call for a formal investigation. The National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. “violated norms of fair access,” according to a copy of the panel’s internal report seen ...

Lisbon / Bloomberg European Central Bank (ECB) officials underlined their readiness to further ease monetary policy as banking, political and sovereign fault lines showed the region remains vulnerable six years after the start of the debt crisis. In Frankfurt, the ECB’s home city, and Brussels, Europe’s nominal capital, policy makers said they’ll take whatever measures are required to help the ...

Beijing / Bloomberg The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) should gradually adjust the amount of deposits that lenders lock away as reserves in accordance with the nation’s international balance of payments situation, according to economists at the central bank. The required reserve ratios (RRR) for commercial lenders should be raised or lowered to meet the country’s macroeconomic demands, researchers led ...

Cernobbio / Reuters The chairman of France’s second-biggest retail bank is more worried about Europe’s banking sector now, in some ways, than when he took the reins at BPCE bank during the depths of the global financial crisis in 2009. Francois Perol said on the sidelines of an economic conference in Italy that negative interest rates in the euro zone ...