Bloomberg Australian lenders including Commonwealth Bank of Australia pledged to rein in uninvited offers of credit and commission charges after an inquiry that unearthed a string of scandals in the financial sector. The new code of practice, in force from July 1, is designed to increase customer protection and introduces new penalties for breaches, the Australian Banking Association said in ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s first investment in an Asian financial technology firm is a key plank in the US bank’s strategy to boost its cash management services in fast-growing regional markets such as India and China, according to a senior regional executive. Last month, JPMorgan announced it was taking a stake in Global PayEx, a Mumbai-based fintech firm which ...

Bloomberg Brazil’s central bank cut its 2019 growth forecast by more than half, blaming factors including falling confidence, a weaker than expected first quarter and a global slowdown. Latin America’s largest economy will expand 0.8 percent this year, down from previous estimate of 2 percent in March, according to the central bank’s quarterly inflation report published. Policy makers are more ...

Bloomberg At least a fifth of adults in the Philippines, or about 13.9 million people, use Facebook daily for news, according to a poll conducted by Social Weather Stations (SWS). As many as 40.4 million individuals, or 60 percent, still get their news through television, about 15 percent through radio and only 2 percent read newspapers daily, according to the ...

Bloomberg India’s current-account deficit narrowed last quarter as a slowdown in the economy sapped imports. The shortfall was $4.6 billion in the January-March period, the RBI said. That compares with a median $6.1 billion deficit estimated in a survey. The gap is smaller than the previous quarter’s $17.7 billion, or 2.7 percent of GDP. It compares with a deficit of ...

Bloomberg In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has drawn the ire of security hawks in Congress for suggesting he could bargain away his blacklisting of Huawei Technologies Co to secure a trade deal with China. He took a big step towards doing just that, signalling that he cares more about selling US products to China than embarking on a clash ...

Bloomberg India and the US plan to initiate ministerial discussions to sort out trade differences after President Donald Trump met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Group of 20 summit in Japan. The meeting — held after Trump called on India to withdraw an “unacceptable” increase in tariffs on US goods — sought to “clear the air and to set ...

Bloomberg Europe and South America’s leading customs union struck a free-trade deal after 20 years of talks, notching up a major win in a global market-opening drive that counters the protectionism of US President Donald Trump. Top European Union officials reached a breakthrough in market-opening negotiations with counterparts from the Mercosur group of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, paving the ...

Bloomberg BlackBerry Ltd shares fell the most in a year after reporting sales from its software and services unit slowed and a recent acquisition contributed less of a boost than some analysts expected. Revenue in the fiscal first quarter was $247 million, the Waterloo, Ontario-based company said, up 16 percent from a year earlier. BlackBerry reorganised its reporting units, combining ...

Bloomberg US consumer spending in the first quarter was even weaker than previously reported on lower outlays for services while business investment was revised higher, leaving the pace of economic growth at a still-solid 3.1 percent. Consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy, grew at a 0.9 percent annual pace, according to a Commerce Department report, the slowest in ...