March, 2020

• 31 March

  Vietnam orders 15-day nationwide isolation

  

  Bloomberg Prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc orders a 15-day period of isolation nationwide beginning from Wednesday, according to a statement on the government’s website. Residents must stay at home and can only go outside for “essential needs,” such as food, medicines, urgent medical services or to go to work at companies permitted by the government to remain open, it said. ...

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• 31 March

  Orban takes sole command of Hungary with emergency law

  

  Bloomberg Hungary’s parliament handed prime minister Viktor Orban the right to rule by decree indefinitely, effectively putting the European Union democracy under his sole command for as long as he sees fit. While governments around the world assume emergency powers to fight the coronavirus, locking down all aspects of every-day life and shutting borders, few democracies have given their governments ...

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• 31 March

  Banks stuck with $23 billion of loans for T-Mobile’s Sprint deal

  

  Bloomberg A group of sixteen banks will have to provide $23 billion of loans to T-Mobile US Inc. in order to allow the mobile carrier to close its planned acquisition of Sprint Corp., after the Covid-19 outbreak disrupted plans to sell the debt to third-party investors. The banks were formally notified that they will need to make the funds available ...

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• 31 March

  Pakistan intervenes to thwart rupee plunge

  

  Bloomberg Pakistan’s central bank is said to have intervened to stop a plunge in the rupee, the worst performer in Asia this week. The South Asian nation’s currency fell to a record low 168 to a dollar in intraday trading as per traders before closing at 165.54, data posted on the website of the State Bank of Pakistan showed. The ...

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• 31 March

  Central banks turn to Japan for yield curve control lessons

  

  Bloomberg As central banks around the world reignite quantitative easing programs or adopt them for the first time, Japan’s key focus of controlling bond yields rather than a quota of purchases is being explored. When the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) broke the emergency glass on March 19, it set a target for the yield on three-year Australian government bonds ...

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• 31 March

  UniCredit suspends dividend, buyback

  

  Bloomberg UniCredit SpA suspended a dividend payment and a share buyback in a setback to Chief Executive Officer Jean Pierre Mustier’s plan to improve shareholder rewards. The decision comes after the European Central Bank recommended that lenders restrict payouts until at least October as the coronavirus pandemic wreaks havoc on markets. Its previous call for banks to be prudent on ...

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• 31 March

  RBI bazooka’s bond market wants more as fiscal stress looms

  

  Bloomberg The Reserve Bank of India (EBI) delivered an emergency rate cut and pledged $50 billion of liquidity infusion. Now traders want it to join other central banks in unleashing a massive-bond buying program. Deutsche Bank AG and Barclays Plc are among those who see the RBI taking the next step of buying debt from the market, or the government, ...

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• 31 March

  Barclays sets net zero carbon target for 2050

  Bloomberg Barclays said it plans to cut its net greenhouse gas emissions to zero over the next 30 years and only provide finance to projects that align with the temperature reduction goals of the Paris climate accord. The London-based bank will put the proposal to go “net zero” by 2050 to shareholders for a vote at its annual general meeting ...

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• 31 March

  China’s March factory outlook jumps as global threat looms

  

  Bloomberg Chinese manufacturing activity rebounded strongly in March, signalling that the world’s second-largest economy is restarting just as it faces a growing threat from slumping external demand. For manufacturing, the official purchasing managers’ index rose to 52.0 this month, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Tuesday. That’s up from a record low of 35.7 ...

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• 31 March

  Lockdown forces Indian policy makers to embrace technology

  

  Bloomberg India’s coronavirus response has unwittingly done away with the endless paperwork that has come to define bureaucracy, as electronic files replace physical records and technology makes in-person meetings redundant. The Finance Ministry is practicing the government’s 21-day social distancing order to prevent the spread of coronavirus by moving all communication online, while keeping minimum staff on roster to attend ...

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