November, 2019

• 27 November

  Citi fined $57m for inaccurate reporting

  

  Bloomberg Citigroup Inc was fined 44 million pounds ($57 million) by the Bank of England (BOE) for years of inaccurate reporting to regulators about the lender’s capital and liquidity levels. Applying its largest fine ever, the central bank’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) said that between June 2014 and December 2018, three UK units of the Wall Street bank had significant ...

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• 27 November

  ‘Germany must go for large fiscal expansion’

  

  Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc reckons Germany should embrace “a large fiscal expansion” but probably won’t; China should deploy just enough to avert “a sharp slowdown”; and “potential meaningful implications” for budget policy are another reason to watch the US presidential election. In its ‘Top of Mind’ report, Goldman explores the fiscal front given monetary policy is nearly exhausted in ...

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• 27 November

  More equity financing will cut emissions: ECB

  Bloomberg Expanding stock markets could be good for the earth, according to research from the European Central Bank (ECB). Economies receiving more funding from stock markets than credit markets generate less carbon, it said in a paper. Increasing the global share of equity financing to half would reduce aggregate per capita carbon emissions by about a quarter of the Paris ...

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• 27 November

  Global risk binge gives central bankers cause to shudder

  

  Bloomberg Global central banks are approaching the end of the year with a collective shudder at the risky behaviour that their low interest-rate policies are encouraging. Policy makers from European Central Bank (ECB) and the Federal Reserve are among those raising cautionary flags at potentially unsafe investing stoked by their efforts to flood economies with ultra-cheap money. Stock indexes from ...

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• 27 November

  Modi needs rivals’ help to meet $3 trillion infra target

  Bloomberg Prime minister Narendra Modi must invest trillions of dollars on roads and other critical infrastructure if he’s to pull India’s economy out of its slump, with at least half coming from provincial governments that are out of his control. India will need to spend 235 trillion rupees ($3.3 trillion) on infrastructure over the coming decade to return economic growth ...

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• 27 November

  Hong Kong sets record in $5bn land sale

  

  Bloomberg Hong Kong’s government fetched a record HK$42 billion ($5 billion) for a plot of land, a sale coming in at the lower end of estimates as the financial hub has been rocked by six months of pro-democracy protests. A tender for the site, which sits atop the high-speed railway station in Kowloon that connects to mainland Chinese cities, was ...

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• 27 November

  Cashless incentives for Japan may be extended

  

  Bloomberg Japan’s measures for encouraging the spread of cashless payments will likely need more funding beyond the end of March and could be extended as part of a planned government stimulus package. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommended that Japan consider lengthening the time frame of its measures to support consumption after an October sales tax increase to support the ...

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• 27 November

  China’s economy continues to slow for seventh month

  

  Bloomberg The earliest-available indicators of China’s economic performance point to a continued slowdown in November. Economic growth was already the slowest in almost three decades in the third quarter, and Bloomberg Economics’ gauge aggregating the earliest data from financial markets and businesses shows that continuing, with a worsening picture for trade, sales manager sentiment, and factory prices. While tensions with ...

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• 27 November

  Thailand backs down on plan to ban 3 pesticides

  

  Bloomberg Thailand backed down on a plan to prohibit three pesticides from December 1 after coming under pressure from farmers, the US government and lobbyists for chemicals companies. The ban on paraquat and chlorpyrifos will be delayed until June 1 next year, industry minister Suriya Juangroongruangkit said in a briefing. Glyphosate — commonly sold as weedkiller Roundup — won’t be ...

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• 27 November

  Equinor retreats from exploration in Norway

  Bloomberg Equinor ASA will reduce its focus on the frontier areas of the Barents Sea in another blow to Norway’s ambition to build a new big oil province in its Arctic region. “Our focus going forward will be on the more prolific areas of the Barents Sea,” Tim Dodson, the company’s executive vice president for exploration, said. That means drilling ...

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