Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc and HSBC Holdings Plc are opening their offices fully in Hong Kong as a fourth wave of infections was contained and the US investment bank said half of its staff in the financial hub are now vaccinated. Both banks told staff that all employees would be permitted to return to their Hong Kong offices, in ...

Bloomberg A big portion of consumer deposits at retail banks could shift to digital currencies if governments start offering them, the Bank of England (BOE) indicated in a discussion paper about the issue. The UK central bank modeled the impact of introducing digital forms of money on the retail banking sector and in one scenario considered what would happen if ...

Bloomberg India’s foreign exchange reserves have by all indications crossed $600 billion, central bank chief Shaktikanta Das said, a huge buffer that will help insulate Asia’s third-largest economy from global spillovers and volatile external flows. Earlier this year, the country’s foreign-exchange reserves briefly surpassed Russia’s to become the world’s fourth-largest, as the Reserve Bank of India continued to hoard dollars ...

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc has begun hiring financial advisers as the lender looks to expand its wealth-management offerings around the globe. The firm is structuring compensation for the newly hired advisers in a way that gives Citigroup shareholders more power than wealth managers themselves, Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser said during a virtual investor conference. Generally, the wealth-management industry has been ...

Bloomberg Zimbabwe has threatened to ban traders from the country’s foreign-exchange (FX) auction platform for exploiting the gap between black-market and official currency prices. Authorities are dealing with an underground phenomenon that has the potential to “totally destabilise the Zimbabwean economy,” Deputy Finance Minister Clemence Chiduwa said in an op-ed in the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper. Companies and individuals could face ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp (BofA) Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said the bank will put more capital into its sales and trading teams, after it took advantage of wild swings in the stock market during the pandemic. “On the sales and trading side, our team’s done a fantastic job,” Moynihan said at an Alliance Bernstein conference. “We’re putting more ...

Bloomberg The US equity-index futures dropped with Treasuries as investors weighed inflation risks and the impact of a minimum corporate tax on technology firms. The dollar ticked up. Futures on the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 declined, while European stocks fluctuated between gains and losses. The 10-year rate added two basis points after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said a slightly ...

Bloomberg The debate about when the Federal Reserve will start scaling back bond purchases is driving some investors to emerging-market assets less exposed to a potential surge in US yields. William Blair Investment Management and Fidelity International are bulking up on high-yield or frontier bonds that are less sensitive to US interest rates. Meantime, Bank of America Corp is recommending ...

DUBAI / WAM With Spain welcoming fully vaccinated international visitors starting from Monday, UAE travellers planning their summer getaways can now choose from over 30 cities in 19 countries across the Emirates network that have opened their doors for tourism and business. From July, Emirates will operate over 280 weekly flights from Dubai to cities in Europe, the US, Middle ...

DUBAI / WAM Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower) has saved more than 1,312 megawatts of electricity last year, which represents a total value of AED3.4 billion and marked a record number of fresh water savings, which amounted to more than 349 million imperial gallons by the end of 2020. The company reaffirmed its full commitment to support the UAE’s ...