July, 2018

• 23 July

  Xi’s foreign policy needs a Confucian overhaul

  

  China has suffered a series of diplomatic blows lately. Relations with the US are at a multi-decade low as a trade war escalates. This month, Malaysia suspended four Chinese-backed projects as its prime minister tries to pull away from Beijing’s orbit. From Myanmar to Sri Lanka to Vietnam, China’s overseas investm-ents are being met with a growing backlash. These are ...

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• 23 July

  The world’s most powerful chat app is squandering its lead

  Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s strategy for expanding WeChat Pay globally is pretty straightforward: Follow the (tourism) money. Grace Yin, operations director of WeChat Pay’s international business, summarised Tencent’s approach at the RISE Conference earlier this month in Hong Kong: If a place has a Chinese tourist, then this place is our target. It’s a smart strategy. Simple, elegant and actionable with ...

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• 23 July

  India’s parliament shortchanges its ailing banks

  

  India needs a strategy to get the government out of banking. Non-performing loans among state-owned banks — a legacy of India’s socialist past which account for nearly 70 percent of deposits — have crossed 5 percent of GDP. The central bank has restricted lending at 11 of them and forced one, IDBI Bank Ltd., to sell itself to the government-owned ...

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• 23 July

  Blackstone targets $10 billion for direct-lending comeback

  

  Bloomberg Blackstone Group LP wants to crash the direct-lending party. In the seven months since dissolving a partnership with FS Investment Corp., Blackstone’s GSO Capital Partners unit has rebuilt its business making nonbank loans to small and mid-size companies. GSO has extended some credit already and plans to amass $10 billion of equity and debt capital for the effort in ...

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• 23 July

  Barclays mulls return to India’s consumer banking

  

  Bloomberg Barclays Plc is considering a return to consumer banking in India as it seeks to deploy more of the capital it holds in the South Asian unit, people familiar with the matter said. The UK bank, which decided to pull out of the business in 2011, aims to rebuild the retail banking operation in Asia’s third-largest economy through digital ...

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• 23 July

  China’s central bank tackles cash crunch in biggest-ever medium-term injection

  

  Bloomberg The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) made the biggest-ever injection of Medium-term Lending Facility funds, in a move that analysts described as further evidence of a shift to monetary easing. The PBOC skipped adding funds via seven-day reverse repurchase agreements on Monday while offering 502 billion yuan of its loans with one-year maturity to major banks in the open ...

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• 23 July

  ECB instructs Italian lender to submit new capital-boosting plan

  

  Bloomberg Banca Carige SpA, the Italian lender hit by board and management departures, said it has been instructed by the European Central Bank (ECB) to submit a new capital-boosting plan and consider options including a merger. The shares dropped. The ECB’s move came after the central bank rejected a capital-conservation plan presented by the Genoa-based bank on June 22, and ...

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• 23 July

  Hawkish turn at central bank may be rand’s saviour

  Bloomberg It’s been another miserable week for South Africa’s rand, but policy support may be coming closer, if money-market bets are anything to go by. The currency slumped more than 2 percent as the South African Reserve Bank left its benchmark rate unchanged at 6.5 percent, a level Governor Lesetja Kganyago described as “accommodative,” while warning that inflation pressures are ...

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• 23 July

  Ghana takes back control of bank after ‘questionable’ deals

  

  Bloomberg Ghana took back control of Agricultural Development Bank Ltd. (ADB) after the regulator annulled deals for more than half of the lender’s shares following its initial public offering in 2016.Belstar and Starmount are affiliates and entered into deals with SIC and Ecobank Capital Ltd., the asset management unit of Ecobank Ghana Ltd., to purchase ADB’s shares without the regulator’s knowledge, ...

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• 23 July

  Ryanair profits sink as labour strife deepens

  

  Bloomberg Labour strife is starting to weigh on Ryanair Holdings Plc, and the conflict looks set to deepen. The discount airline posted a 20 percent drop in first-quarter profit on Monday, and warned that walkouts by trade unions, along with regional air traffic-control strikes, are making customers wary of booking trips. While the carrier was able to accommodate passengers whose ...

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