Bloomberg Lloyds Banking group Plc beat forecasts with a pretax profit of 792 million pounds ($1.1 billion) in its fourth quarter, helped by a buoyant UK housing market and government support for its borrowers. Britain’s biggest mortgage lender announced a dividend 0.57 pence per share, marking the end of a year without payouts to protect lending during the pandemic. In ...

Bloomberg Poland’s state-controlled PKO Bank Polski SA wants to end the legacy of its Swiss-franc mortgage lending this year, piling pressure on the rest of the industry to follow suit. The country’s biggest bank will seek shareholders’ approval to offer conversion of foreign currency loans to all borrowers once the pilot program it’s running with selected clients is over, Chief ...

Bloomberg The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is concerned that cryptocurrencies may impact financial stability in Asia’s third-largest economy, a view that could shape looming regulations on the asset that is breaking price-records around the world. The monetary authority has conveyed these “major concerns” to government, Governor Shaktikanta Das said in an interview to CNBC TV-18. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) will probably signal its readiness to lower its negative interest rate by pledging to mitigate any harmful impact such a move would have at a review next month, according to a former BOJ official in charge of monetary policy. “The BOJ likely wants to restore a rate cut as a viable option,” Kazuo Momma ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong unveiled its first stamp-duty increase on stock trades since 1993, sparking a broad selloff in the $7.6 trillion market and sending shares of the city’s exchange to their biggest plunge in more than five years. The planned trading-tax increase to 0.13% from 0.10% was part of a raft of new measures announced in Hong Kong’s budget that ...

Bloomberg The National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. (NSE) shut trading in its cash and derivative segments earlier on Wednesday, citing “issues” with telecom links of its two service providers, which it said impacted the system and stopped prices from updating. “We are working on restoring the systems as soon as possible,” a spokesperson for NSE, the world’s biggest derivatives ...

ABU DHABI / WAM The UAE has strongly condemned the cowardly attack that targeted a convoy of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) near Goma, the capital of the North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Italian ambassador to the DRC and two other people were killed during the attack. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs ...

Bloomberg Oil rose near $62 a barrel with investment banks and traders predicting the market’s rally can go further. Futures in New York gained 0.8% on Tuesday and are up almost 30% so far this year. The market is heading towards what could be the tightest quarter since at least 2000, according to Morgan Stanley, while Socar Trading SA sees ...

Bloomberg Reliance Industries Ltd has started carving out its new oil-to-chemicals operation into an independent unit with a $25 billion loan from the parent, as billionaire Mukesh Ambani steps up efforts to unlock the value of his businesses. The wholly owned unit’s assets will be funded by the interest-bearing loan, which will be an “efficient mechanism to upstream cash, including ...

Bloomberg China’s overseas energy financing dropped to the lowest level since 2008 after the pandemic hampered deal-making in developing nations. Financing for foreign energy projects, including power plants and mines, fell by 43% to $4.6 billion, according to Boston University’s Global Energy Finance Database, which tracks data from two state-owned development banks. More than half of lending was for a ...