January, 2020

• 25 January

  President set to gain as Peru heads to polls

  

  Bloomberg Four months after the shock dissolution of Peru’s Congress, President Martin Vizcarra’s gamble looks set to pay off once new lawmakers are elected on Sunday. Polls suggest the parliament will emerge more fractured but influenced by a set of centrist parties more open to the president’s path of political and judicial reform. At the same time, the opposition movement ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Putin’s key Kremlin aide quits

  

  Bloomberg Russian President Vladimir Putin’s longtime Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov, who was responsible for handling separatist forces in Ukraine, quit over unspecified policy differences, said his longtime ally Alexei Chesnakov. The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was no official decree on Surkov’s resignation and that there had been no change in policy. The contradictory statements come at a time ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Poland summons EU official as spat over judiciary escalates

  

  Bloomberg The conflict between Poland and the European Union over democratic principles escalated overnight as the bloc’s highest official in Warsaw was summoned to the Foreign Ministry. Following an “unacceptable comment” by EU Commission spokesman Christian Wigand, the head of the commission’s office in the country was summoned to a meeting at the Polish Foreign Ministry, Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Lagarde warns markets not to assume policy on autopilot

  

  Bloomberg European Central Bank (ECB) president Christine Lagarde warned investors not to assume that current monetary policy is locked in for the foreseeable future just because officials are focused on reviewing their strategy. “To those who think it’s on autopilot, that’s ridiculous,” she said in a Bloomberg Television interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Let’s look at ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  AmEx gets reprieve after JPMorgan hikes Sapphire Reserve fee

  

  Bloomberg American Express Co has high hopes for 2020, predicting earnings that surpassed many analysts’ expectations and prospects for “more rational” competition from its biggest rivals. After sweetening the bonuses on some of its most popular products, including the Green card, AmEx said overall rewards costs climbed 8% to $2.72 billion during the fourth quarter. That was less than the ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Nigeria tightens screws on banks

  

  Bloomberg Nigeria turned the screws even tighter on lenders by increasing the amount of money they need to park with the central bank for the first time in almost four years in an effort to tame inflation. The West African nation’s central bank raised the cash-reserve requirement for lenders to 27.5% of total deposits, from 22.5%, to curtail excess liquidity ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Deutsche Bank buys more debt of Altico

  

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG and a Singapore based hedge fund bought more debt of an embattled Indian shadow lender, highlighting the growing foreign interest in the discounted assets of the financier at the center of a credit crisis. Deutsche Bank has almost doubled the debt it holds of Altico Capital India Ltd to 3 billion rupees ($42.1 million) in the ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Davos digital-payments rift pits FB against central banks

  

  Bloomberg A rift among the global elite over the future of digital payments was on display during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. At stake is the potential overhaul of the global financial system that could see companies like Facebook Inc pitted against the world’s central banks in the race to develop a ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  Swiss bank ex-CEO sanctioned for insider trading

  Bloomberg A Swiss bank’s former chief executive officer has been sanctioned by the country’s financial regulator for insider trading in his wife’s name and what Finma called other “serious breaches of supervisory law.” The man executed the trades using his wife’s account at other lenders for several years, violating his bank’s internal directives, Finma said. The identities of the bank ...

  Read More »
• 25 January

  SoftBank’s telecom unit taps banks for bond sale

  

  Bloomberg The Japanese telecom business of Masayoshi Son’s technology conglomerate mandated banks for its first domestic bond sale since listing in 2018, people familar with the matter said. SoftBank Corp will seek to price yen-denominated bonds before March 31, Japan’s fiscal year end, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. The company ...

  Read More »