March, 2020

• 22 March

  UBS to make several billion Swiss francs available for SMEs

  

  Bloomberg UBS Group AG is making “several billion” Swiss francs available to small and mid-sized companies as it backs Switzerland’s measures to help businesses hit by the coronavirus pandemic. The bank will provide liquidity to smaller Swiss corporate clients “who find themselves in need through no fault of their own,” the lender said in a statement. Amortisation payments or leasing ...

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• 22 March

  Flagstar stops funding most new home loans

  

  Bloomberg Flagstar Bancorp, one of the United State’s biggest lenders to mortgage providers, has stopped funding most new home loans without government backing. The move, announced to its customers, deprives the housing market of one of the country’s 10 largest so-called warehouse lenders. Other lenders that make non-traditional mortgages to households will no longer be able to borrow from Troy, ...

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• 22 March

  Nigerian central bank to start uniform exchange rate for naira

  

  Bloomberg Nigeria’s central bank will migrate to a single exchange rate for the naira by collapsing the multiple exchange rate policy that determined the value for the local currency, people with direct knowledge of the matter said. The West African nation will merge the official rate, the rate for importers and exporters and rate for foreign-exchange bureaus, among others, according ...

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• 22 March

  Central banks battle to gain control of wild global markets

  

  Bloomberg Central banks in the Asia Pacific pledged to spend billions of dollars and implemented new policy steps to stem a bond market rout. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) and Bank of Korea (BOK) offered to buy bonds worth a total of $13.1 billion, while Japan’s authority said it would supply another $36.7 billion of funds. Australia’s central bank (RBA), ...

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• 22 March

  Ghana asks banks to seek nod before paying dividends

  Bloomberg Bank of Ghana has told the country’s lenders that they must seek approval before declaring and paying dividends on 2019 earnings as the regulator moves to guard against banks taking advantage of eased reserve rules due to the coronavirus to boost payouts to investors. After cutting its benchmark interest rate by 150 basis points on March 18 to combat ...

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• 22 March

  Europe retailers grapple with biggest disruption in decades

  

  Bloomberg Simon Wolfson, chief executive officer of clothing chain Next Plc, said that the coronavirus pandemic presents the global retail industry with its biggest threat in nearly half a century. The oil price shock of 1973 — when Wolfson was five years old — triggered a stock market crash, soaring inflation and high unemployment. The viral contagion could become just ...

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• 22 March

  HK to extend virus testing for arrivals with no symptoms

  

  Bloomberg Hong Kong will extend Covid-19 testing to asymptomatic arrivals after a sharp rise in infections driven mainly by imported cases, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said. The government will take other measures, including postponing university entrance exams and ordering civil servants to return to working from home, Lam told the media. The resumption of schools, which have been closed since ...

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• 22 March

  Virus spurs American Air’s first cargo-only flights in 36 years

  

  Bloomberg American Airlines Group Inc is shifting some of its biggest idled jets to ferry just cargo — the carrier’s first flights without passengers in nearly four decades. The Boeing Co 777-300s will fly medical supplies, military mail, e-commerce packages and high-demand office equipment as more people work from home, the airline said in a statement. The wide-body flights began ...

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• 22 March

  Britons add paint, shrubs to their virus stockpiles of loo roll

  

  Bloomberg As most Britons were clearing the shops of pasta, toilet paper and painkillers to weather the coronavirus outbreak, Jenny Yeo’s thoughts were elsewhere: her daughter’s room, which she’d been planning to decorate. The barrister from Penarth, south Wales, headed to her local branch of home improvement store B&Q and spent 200 pounds ($240) on paint, wallpaper and wood paneling. ...

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• 22 March

  Ethiopian Air losses from virus reach $190m

  Bloomberg Ethiopian Airlines Group has lost over $190 million as the impact of the coronavirus on global travel hurts Africa’s only consistently profitable airline. “Under the current situation, it is facing huge challenges,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in a televised address to the public. The carrier has suspended flights to 30 destinations as demand collapses and some countries ...

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