Banking

TOKYO / AFP Japan’s central bank chief on Tuesday defended a negative interest rate policy slammed as a desperate bid to keep alive efforts at resuscitating the world’s number three economy. Haruhiko Kuroda’s comments came after the Bank of Japan held off unleashing more stimulus following a two-day meeting, as it gauges the impact of its unprecedented move into sub-zero rates. ...

BLOOMBERG FirstRand Ltd. plans to close branches and cut jobs at its South African retail-lending unit as customers switch to digital banking and the continent’s biggest lender by market value responds to an economy on the brink of a recession. Almost 600 positions will be lost at First National Bank, while more than 500 people at the Johannesburg-based company may ...

BLOOMBERG Emerging-market currencies weakened for a second day and stocks fell from a 2016 high as sliding oil prices weighed on assets of commodity exporters and growing wagers the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates as soon as the next quarter damped demand for risk. The South African rand and Russia’s ruble depreciated at least 1.7 percent, leading declines among ...

BERN / Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank (SNB) will probably stay on hold at its monetary policy meeting on March 17 as banks in the country are already facing pressure from negative interest rates, economists and strategists say in notes to clients. The fact that the euro remained broadly stable against Swiss franc after the European Central Bank (ECB) meeting ...

TOKYO / AFP European stock markets rose on Monday, with Frankfurt hitting levels above 10,000 points, following a strong start to the week across Asia as traders looked ahead to more central bank action. The Bank of Japan started a two-day meeting on Monday, while the Federal Reserve and Bank of England also gather this week to decide over the ...

BERN / Bloomberg For the second time in less than four months, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) president has seen the franc weaken rather than strengthen in the wake of new European Central Bank stimulus. That relief means Jordan and his fellow policy makers won’t cut rates on March 17, according to the majority of economists in a Bloomberg survey. ...

BERLIN / Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is partly to blame for market mistrust in Deutsche Bank AG because it spearheaded implementation of new liability rules for bondholders in a law passed last year, the lender’s Co-Chief Executive Officers John Cryan and Juergen Fitschen told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). While the government has solved the problem of liability capital, ...

BEIJING / BLOOMBERG Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has set the fees it’s offering to banks on its loan of upto $4 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. China’s largest online emporium is offering 60 basis points to lenders committing $200 million and above to the facility, which banks are starting to market from $3 billion, according to the ...

NEW YORK / Bloomberg Morgan Stanley, one of the Wall Street banks that deals directly with the Federal Reserve, cut its bond yield forecasts for 2016 and said the US central bank will wait until December before raising interest rates. “The global backdrop for rates markets looks so supportive that 2016 may become known as the ‘Year of the Bull,’” according ...

DHAKA / Bloomberg Bangladesh’s finance minister has pledged to act against its central bank for not informing him about a cyber heist in which hackers broke into a Bangladesh Bank account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last month. Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, the finance minister, told reporters in Dhaka on Sunday that he was going to meet ...