Bloomberg Ethiopia’s effort to stamp out counterfeiting by introducing new currency notes is pulling people who’ve never had a bank account into the financial system. Over the past four weeks, almost 1 million previously unbanked Ethiopians have handed in their two-decade-old banknotes, according to the central bank. In exchange, they were given a bank account from which they can draw ...

Bloomberg Singapore’s central bank signaled it would keep monetary policy unchanged for longer to complement a massive fiscal stimulus supporting the economy’s recovery. The Monetary Authority of Singapore, which uses the exchange rate as its main tool rather than a benchmark interest rate, kept its policy settings unchanged, in line with economists’ forecasts. The slope of the currency band was ...

Bloomberg European investors started the past week preparing for a Brexit showdown. They ended up getting blindsided by a fresh wave of virus restrictions, in a reminder of the pandemic’s power to thrash markets. The announcements of Paris curfews and London curbs on activity was what ultimately drove the Stoxx 600 to its first weekly loss in three and sent ...