March, 2021

• 2 March

  Abducted Nigerian schoolgirls freed

  

  Bloomberg Gunmen in Nigeria freed hundreds of schoolgirls abducted last week in the northern state of Zamfara, the police said. “They were released in the early hours of this morning,“ state Commissioner of Police Abutu Yaro said by phone on Tuesday. A total of 279 girls were released, state Governor Bello Matawalle said on BBC Hausa radio. No ransom was ...

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• 2 March

  Moderates may agree to Chile’s new constitution

  Bloomberg Chile’s Constitutional Assembly is shaping up to be far from the radical hotbed some investors had feared, as a split political left increases the odds that fringe candidates will be shut out from the rewrite of the nation’s charter. Parties open to changing the nation’s economic rules failed to coalesce behind one list of candidates for the body that ...

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• 2 March

  RBNZ: ‘Prolonged’ monetary stimulus remains necessary

  

  Bloomberg New Zealand’s central bank (RBNZ) signalled it is in no rush to remove monetary stimulus, saying inflation will slow next year and the economic outlook remains highly uncertain amid the Covid-19 pandemic. “Prolonged monetary stimulus” remains necessary and “considerable time and patience” will be required to meet its inflation and employment targets, the Reserve Bank said in a statement ...

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• 2 March

  Myanmar to limit cash withdrawal from banks, ATMs

  

  Bloomberg The central bank of Myanmar is limiting cash withdrawals from banks and automated teller machines a month after the country’s military coup. Individuals will not be allowed to withdraw more than 2 million kyat ($1,406) from their bank accounts while businesses will be allowed to withdraw up to 20 million kyat a week, according to a directive signed by ...

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• 2 March

  Citi’s head of Hong Kong investment banking quits

  Bloomberg Christopher Laskowski, head of Hong Kong corporate and investment banking at Citigroup Inc., is leaving after 23 years at the US bank, according to people familiar with the matter. Laskowski, who also heads Citigroup’s Asia global asset managers with a focus on private equity and sovereign wealth funds, recently resigned. He joined Citigroup in New York in 1997 and ...

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• 2 March

  Goldman Sachs to jump back into cryptocurrency trading

  

  Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is restarting a trading desk for cryptocurrencies amid a surge in the value of Bitcoin, a person familiar with the effort said. The Wall Street bank will begin offering Bitcoin futures among other products by mid-March after halting a similar effort started in 2018, Crypto was once shunned at elite firms like Goldman Sachs, but ...

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• 2 March

  UBS says get ready for global equity rotation

  

  Bloomberg Less easy financial conditions will likely lead to lower overall returns in global markets while favouring growth stocks over value, according to UBS Group AG. Growth and earnings will become bigger drivers of returns next quarter, strategists including Bhanu Baweja wrote in a note. A bottoming in real rates and credit spreads will signal the end of a liquidity ...

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• 2 March

  HDFC says tech issue resolved

  Bloomberg India’s largest private lender, HDFC Bank Ltd., said issues related to internet banking were resolved after some customers faced second outage in three months. “There were intermittent issues in accessing Net Banking and Mobile Banking, faced by some of our customers. The issue stands resolved,” the bank’s spokesman said. The nation’s most valuable lender has been facing repeated technical ...

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• 2 March

  Central bank at cusp of reflation trade girds for long fight

  

  Bloomberg The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) signalled it’s ready for a prolonged battle with bond traders betting on a reflation wave sweeping across the global economy. “The bank remains committed to the 3-year yield target and recently purchased bonds to support the target and will continue to do so as necessary,” Governor Philip Lowe said in a statement, after ...

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• 2 March

  Investors put record $86bn into stock ETFs in February

  

  Bloomberg When faced with a spike in Treasury yields and a tech sector pullback that erased $1 trillion from stock prices, exchange-traded fund (ETF) investors decided to pour more money into equities. Despite the recent turmoil in the bond market, the S&P 500 Index extended a rally from its March 2020 lows to more than 70% and ETFs tracking stocks ...

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