Banking

Jakarta / BLOOMBERG Indonesia’s top banks may get a lift from new government plans to spur the economy, which are seen boosting loan growth while allowing them to protect margins that are already among the world’s widest. The Financial Services Authority, known as OJK, will lower the ceiling for deposit rates this month for major lenders, a step it intends ...

Bloomberg One week before a long-awaited stimulus decision, European Central Bank (ECB) officials are privately deliberating over how to enhance their monetary policy stance without maiming its transmission. Committees studying how to mitigate the impact on banks have prepared potential measures that range from variations on a tiered deposit rate to techniques for countering the impact of stimulus on excess ...

Tokyo / Bloomberg Bank of Japan (BOJ) Deputy Governor Hiroshi Nakaso indicated the central bank is prepared to take its benchmark rate deeper into negative territory, though not immediately. “We have designed a policy that technically allows us to cut the level further,” Nakaso told reporters in Okinawa on Thursday, referring to a minus 0.1 percent interest rate policy the ...

PARIS / Bloomberg With some of their European rivals including Deutsche Bank AG still reeling from full-year losses, French banks entered a tumultuous 2016 with the strongest earnings in almost a decade and pledged to reward shareholders with higher dividends. Their resolve is about to be put to the test. In France, a focus on consumer lending has helped shield lenders ...

New Delhi / BLOOMBERG State Bank of India (SBI) shares surged the most in more than five years, leading a rally in the nation’s lenders after the central bank eased rules allowing them to bolster capital ratios. SBI, the nation’s largest lender by assets, jumped as much as 11 percent, the biggest intraday gain since June 2010, and traded 8.9 ...

Cape Town / Bloomberg Nedbank Group Ltd., the South African lender controlled by Old Mutual Plc, said full-year profit gained 9.4 percent after the retail unit boosted customer numbers and the bank controlled costs. Net income rose to 10.72 billion rand ($688 million), from 9.8 billion rand in 2014, the Johannesburg-based company said in a statement on Wednesday. Earnings per ...

Bloomberg The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) slashed euro holdings in its currency reserves to 20 percent from 45 percent in 2012 and recently added the South Korean won. The central bank said on Wednesday it had allocated 5 percent of net reserves to the won, in line with holdings of the Japanese yen, Canadian dollar, British pound and Chinese ...

MELBOURNE / Bloomberg Australia & New Zealand (ANZ) Banking Group Ltd. said its wealth management head Joyce Phillips is leaving as the lender folds parts of the business into its retail unit. The Australian wealth distribution business, and wealth management activities in Asia and New Zealand, will be merged with the retail units, the Melbourne-based lender said in a regulatory ...

Bloomberg With liquidity in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region falling and economic growth cooling, companies want to maximise the efficiency of their cashflow and working capital finance. They are starting to look for more complex instruments, driving change in the banking sector. Traditionally, firms sourcing supplies from abroad simply used letters of credit (LCs). The LC then allowed the ...

Frankfurt / AFP Deutsche Bank has announced further results of the bond buyback scheme aimed at boosting confidence in its financial solidity, insisting that the low take-up was proof of investors’ trust in Germany’s biggest lender. Earlier this month, Deutsche Bank had announced plans to repurchase up to $2.0 billion of dollar-denominated securities, as well as 3.0 billion euros of ...