Banking

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 ...

PARIS / BLOOMBERG BNP Paribas SA, France’s largest bank, had its long-term credit rating cut to A from A+ by Standard & Poor’s (S&P), which cited a “less favourable” view of the lender’s capital cushion. The bank hasn’t laid out plans to issue enough securities to increase its total loss-absorbing capacity, or TLAC, to meet S&P’s preferred level by 2018, ...

Bloomberg American companies will become even bigger buyers of bonds sold by their peers as negative interest rates worldwide intensify pressure on them to deploy their $4 trillion cash pile, according to Citigroup Inc. “In their search for yield, companies are likely to increase their allocation toward 1-5 year corporate bonds rated A or higher,” said Ajay Khorana, global head ...

WARSAW / Bloomberg Polish Central Bank (PCB) Governor Marek Belka said rate setters are debating how to transition from their pause in monetary easing as they weigh the risk of deterioration in the global economy and potential capital inflows as a result of the euro area’s quantitative easing program. The 10-member council left the seven-day reference rate at a record-low ...

Ottawa / Bloomberg Canadian stocks rose, joining a rally in global markets as growing optimism on European stimulus overshadowed a surprise increase in Canada’s jobless rate. The Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index rose 1.1 percent to 13,522 in Toronto, to the highest since December 1 while capping a second weekly increase. The resurgent S&P/TSX is one of the best-performing developed ...

LONDON / Bloomberg Britain’s banks have criticised the UK Treasury’s plan to pare back the scope of the bank levy to lenders’ domestic businesses only, warning international operations could still be subject to taxation after the changes. Under the government’s current proposal, funds raised at a UK holding company level and then passed down to an international subsidiary would continue ...