Bloomberg Indonesia’s central bank may buy billions of dollars of sovereign bonds at zero interest, or below its benchmark rate to help the government finance a wider deficit arising out of stimulus measures to counter fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. Bank Indonesia may bear the full cost of an expanded health care and social safety net budget of $27.6 billion ...

Bloomberg UK households continued to amass savings and pay down debt in May as stores remained closed for a second month in an effort to the stop the spread of coronavirus. The build-up of money in bank accounts reflects both the reduced opportunities to spend and the fact that the wages of millions of furloughed workers are being paid by ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Korea (BOK) said unemployment and other economic fallout from the pandemic will accelerate already existing declines in South Korea’s potential growth rate. Higher jobless rates, more people dropping out of the workforce, and a delayed recovery in corporate investment will exacerbate a downward trend that started before the coronavirus, the bank said in a report. Slowing ...

Bloomberg An incessant steepening in Japan’s yield curve is raising the stakes for the central bank’s monthly bond-buying plan. Faced with mounting losses on their portfolios, investors are looking to the Bank of Japan to boost purchases of super-long debt to ease the pressure. The spread between 10-year and 30-year yields widened for a third month in June in the ...

Bloomberg Work from home may remain part of the norm for many in India’s financial industry beyond the end of the world’s biggest lockdown. The reason: elimination of lengthy commutes in the past three months has boosted employee productivity. Take Jefferies’ India team for example. On average, its 60 members have managed to save over an hour every day on ...

Bloomberg Zimbabwe has sufficient foreign currency reserves to sustain the reintroduced foreign currency auction system, the state-run Sunday Mail reported, citing central bank Governor John Mangudya. Mangudya said local lenders have almost $1 billion in their foreign currency accounts. “It’s about sufficient resources utilisation of resources,” Mangudya was quoted as saying in the newspaper. The country reintroduced the foreign currency ...

Bloomberg Germany’s state-owned development bank KfW is facing potential losses of 100 million euros ($112 million) after payment company Wirecard AG filed for insolvency. KfW’s subsidiary Ipex Bank granted the scandal-hit company a 100 million-euro credit line in September 2018. The financing was extended last year and has been fully drawn down, a spokesman for Ipex told Bloomber. There are ...

Bloomberg US equity futures and European stocks dropped after a resurgence in virus infections slowed down the pace of business re-openings. The dollar index climbed to a one-month high, while Treasuries steadied. Trading volume across European shares was below average, with banks and energy producers trending lower. Royal Dutch Shell Plc slumped after announcing it will write down as much ...

Bloomberg Stock investors wanting to preserve capital could do worse than look to China, whose relative stability stands out against the chaos in global markets. The country’s equities have gone back to the upward grind that has marked past rebounds since a bubble burst in 2015. The calm has allowed the CSI 300 Index to post at least 14 up ...

Bloomberg Going uphill is looking increasingly unlikely for Japanese stocks that are about to cap their best quarter since at least 2016. Recent events are starting to make some investors nervous, leading to a selloff in Japanese stocks by foreign holders. US Sun Belt states are wrestling with mounting coronavirus cases, while the European Union works to bar Americans from ...