April, 2021

• 13 April

  Hong Kong sets election date on December 19

  

  Bloomberg Hong Kong will hold its Legislative Council election on December 19 after delaying the vote by more than a year because of the pandemic, a move that allows the government to push through changes that give China a veto over any pro-democracy politician. Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam announced the changes on Tuesday, after she said her advisory Executive ...

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• 13 April

  Ameriprise to buy BMO unit with $124bn in client funds

  

  Bloomberg Bank of Montreal (BMO) agreed to sell its Europe, Middle East and Africa asset-management unit to Ameriprise Financial Inc. for $847 million, marking Chief Executive Officer Darryl White’s biggest move yet to trim the bank’s portfolio of non-core businesses. The sale includes the opportunity for some US clients to move to Ameriprise’s Columbia Threadneedle Investments unit, subject to their ...

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• 13 April

  Big US banks cut loans to record low again, as deposits jump

  

  Bloomberg The 25 biggest US banks collectively reduced their loan holdings by 8% in the year through March, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest weekly survey. Total loans fall by $447 billion to $5.45 trillion, Fed data show. Meanwhile, total deposits, which provide the funds that banks lend out to borrowers, jumped 16% to $10.13 trillion. Their combined loan-to-deposit ratio ...

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• 13 April

  Credit Suisse cuts bonuses following Archegos loss

  Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG slashed the amount of money set aside for bonuses by hundreds of millions of dollars and used the savings to limit financial hit from the implosion of Archegos Capital Management, Financial Times (FT) reported. Cuts to bonus pool accruals and other one-off items added about $600 million to underlying profit before tax for the first ...

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• 13 April

  Ex-BOJ member Sakurai sees no rate cuts without fresh crisis

  

  Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) is highly unlikely to deepen its negative interest rate without a fresh economic crisis on a massive scale, according to former board member Makoto Sakurai, whose term ended last month. “The BOJ didn’t lower rates” even at the height of the pandemic shock last year in March, Sakurai said in his first interview since ...

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• 13 April

  Goldman Sachs to open new office in Birmingham

  

  Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is opening a new office in Birmingham, marking the investment bank’s second UK location outside London. The new building is set to open in the third quarter of 2021 and will eventually have several hundred staff across a number of divisions, the bank said in a statement on Tuesday. Engineering will be the first business ...

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• 13 April

  Indian bank fined for misselling its riskier debt to individuals

  Bloomberg India’s markets regulator fined Yes Bank Ltd. for claiming that riskier bonds it sold to individual investors were as safe as term deposits. Securities & Exchange Board of India ordered Yes Bank to pay $3.3 million after it “deliberately misrepresented” the Additional Tier 1 notes, “by suppressing the inherent risks of these bonds and distorting facts to mislead their ...

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• 13 April

  Goldman joins PineBridge to go bearish on Indonesian rupiah

  

  Bloomberg Indonesia’s central bank says the rupiah is “very undervalued” following a two-month slide. Investment banks and money managers are predicting further losses. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says climbing US yields and a potentially firmer dollar will keep hurting Indonesian assets in the near term, while PineBridge Investments Asia Ltd. says the rupiah will keep sliding due to the global ...

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• 13 April

  Bond yields climb as US futures steady before CPI

  

  Bloomberg Bond yields climbed and US futures steadied as traders awaited inflation data, a Treasury auction and corporate earnings to assess the market outlook. Bitcoin hit a record. The yield on the 10-year US benchmark headed back toward 1.7%, with rates across Europe rising in sympathy. Gains in European shares were led by tech shares, while most US stock futures ...

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• 13 April

  Liquidity-obsessed China stock traders snub upbeat earnings

  

  Bloomberg Stock investors in China are ignoring a spate of recent bullish earnings as worries about further liquidity tightening continue to weigh on market sentiment. A 1200% jump in Tesla Inc-supplier Sichuan Yahua Industrial Group Co’s first-quarter earnings guidance was followed by a slump of as much as 7.7% in its shares on Tuesday. In the previous session, Suofeiya Home ...

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