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Bloomberg Canada shares rose, capping the biggest one-week advance since January 2009 despite a record plunge in employment in the country and another surge in jobless claims in the US. Investors focused instead on another dose of economic support south of the border. The S&P/TSX Composite index climbed 1.7%, bringing the weekly gain to 9.5%, the biggest since January, 2009, ...

Bloomberg US stocks posted biggest weekly gain since 1974 as investors looked past staggering jobless numbers when Federal Reserve released new measures to cushion fallout from coronavirus. Oil fell as investors saw a supply-curb proposal as insufficient. The S&P 500 Index rallied for the third time in four days, bringing this week’s increase to 12%. The Fed announced another series ...

Bloomberg The Philippine central bank is ready to cut its policy rate to below 3% to support an economy reeling from a “once in a lifetime crisis,” according to Governor Benjamin Diokno. “It is now clear that reverting to where we were in 2018 — policy rate at 3.0% — is no longer an appropriate policy goal,” the governor said ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co will raise mortgage borrowing standards starting Tuesday, Reuters reported, citing Chief Marketing Officer for home lending businesses Amy Bonitatibus. Customers applying for a new mortgage will need a credit score of at least 700 and will be asked to pay 20% of the home’s value as a down payment, according to the report. JPMorgan & ...

Bloomberg The Federal Reserve may not be done with its all-out blitz to help the US economy survive a coronavirus-induced shutdown, even after launching an unprecedented $2.3 trillion in lending programs. The central bank used up only about 40% of the as much as $454 billion in seed capital that Congress provided it in extending help to small and mid-sized ...

Bloomberg The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has raised its stake in Housing Development Finance Corp. to just over 1%. China’s central bank held about 17.5 million shares at the end of March, according to quarterly data filed by India’s biggest mortgage lender to exchanges. It is mandatory for companies to disclose shareholding of more than 1% at the end ...

Bloomberg Europe is likely to experience a more severe recession than the rest of the world, but growth should start in the second half of the year, the European Central Bank’s vice president said. A genuine recovery might take until 2021, but the first signs of growth should be visible starting in the third quarter of the year, Luis de ...

Bloomberg The UK government’s overdraft extension at the Bank of England (BOE) shows that the coronavirus pandemic will be so costly that even the country’s leadership is worrying about how to finance it. As the UK unleashes the biggest fiscal stimulus in decades, the concern is that its borrowing strains the ability of debt markets to soak it up, pushing ...

Bloomberg Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp., (OCBC) Southeast Asia’s second-largest bank, has joined some global peers in pledging it won’t lay off staff due to the coronavirus pandemic. “We do not plan to have retrenchment exercise arising from this outbreak,” Chief Executive Officer Samuel Tsien said in a recent memo to employees. Despite the expected hit to the bank’s revenue growth, Singapore-based ...

Bloomberg Now that Japan’s government is urging consumers and businesses to step up efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak, shoppers may finally have no excuse but to embrace e-commerce and wean themselves from brick-and-mortar stores. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared a state of emergency for Tokyo and six other areas last week. In response, Uniqlo clothing owner Fast Retailing Co, ...