May, 2021

• 31 May

  Digital bank upstarts are years away from profits in Hong Kong

  

  Bloomberg Hong Kong’s virtual banks are facing years of red ink on the bottom line after making limited inroads against their brick-and-mortar rivals in the financial hub. The two leading digital banks so far, Mox Bank Ltd, backed by Standard Chartered, and ZA Bank Ltd, bankrolled by China’s ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance, predict they will start breaking even by 2024 ...

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• 31 May

  Credit Suisse cuts risk as defections mount in wake of scandals

  

  Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG is grappling with how to keep top bankers from fleeing to competitors and drastically reducing risk as new Chairman Antonio Horta-Osorio seeks to recover from a series of scandals. The lender is cutting ties with SoftBank Group Corp, a backer to Lex Greensill’s collapsed supply-chain finance empire, and it’s temporarily barring clients from withdrawing all ...

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• 30 May

  Fed admonishes Deutsche Bank for ongoing compliance failures

  

  Bloomberg The Federal Reserve has privately told Deutsche Bank AG that its compliance programs aren’t up to snuff, signalling that the scandal-plagued bank is failing to adhere to a number of past accords with US regulators. The Fed’s recent warning came in an annual regulatory assessment that said Deutsche Bank hadn’t improved its risk management practices despite being under confidential ...

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• 30 May

  Kuroda: BOJ to mull climate in monetary policy discussions

  

  Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) will consider climate change in its monetary policy discussions, Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said in his clearest signal yet that the central bank is looking to support the battle against global warming. “We have a great interest” in climate change and its impact on the economy and the financial system, Kuroda said in an interview ...

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• 30 May

  SNB’s Jordan says inflation risk is moderate

  Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank’s (SNB) monetary policy is appropriate given there’s no great risk of spiralling inflation, its President Thomas Jordan said in an interview with Schweiz am Wochenende (SamW). “We think the risk of inflation is moderate in Switzerland,” he told the newspaper in an interview. “The strong currency acts as a damper on inflation, the franc is ...

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• 30 May

  China eases offshore funding limit for foreign banks

  

  Bloomberg China’s central bank raised the limit on how much smaller lenders and foreign banks operating in the country can borrow offshore, a move that will ease a funding shortfall and give a push to expansion plans for firms such as HSBC Holdings. Their ability to borrow outside of China was expanded this week after the People’s Bank of China ...

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• 30 May

  Retail frenzy lifts three of Asia’s top-performing stock markets

  

  Bloomberg Three of Asia’s best-performing stock markets this year are also ones where individual investors are playing out-sized roles, underscoring the growing influence of retail traders around the world. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Vietnam, where individuals account for about 90% of turnover and the VN Index has surged 20% in 2021, the most among major benchmarks in ...

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• 30 May

  Great inflation trade of 2021 takes a back seat on Wall Street

  

  Bloomberg Wall Street’s great inflation trade is losing steam, judging by a slew of cross-asset signals and where all the investing billions are actually going. With reflation strategies again playing second-fiddle to the crypto volatility and meme stock mania, stable Treasury yields helped the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 outperform the Dow Jones Industrial Average by the most in seven weeks. Debt ...

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• 30 May

  UAE gains support for UNWTO’s executive council membership

  

  ABU DHABI / WAM The UAE has obtained support from member states of the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Regional Commission for the Middle East for its candidature for the organisation’s Executive Council for the first time. The voting process to ratify candidacy will take place during the UNWTO General Assembly meeting in Morocco next October. The UAE submitted its nomination ...

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• 30 May

  Biden tax plan forecast to bring in $3.6tr in decade

  

  Bloomberg President Joe Biden’s proposed tax hikes are forecast to bring in $3.6 trillion over the next decade, the Treasury Department said, a key funding source for the $4 trillion he hopes to spend remaking the American economy and social safety net. The figure, representing the sum of all tax increases if enacted by Congress, came as is part of ...

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