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Bloomberg Bank of the Philippine Islands has started its own probe into fund transfers made using a Westpac Banking Corp service blamed for Australia’s worst-ever money laundering breach. The Ayala Corp-owned bank started investigating transactions made through LitePay, a low-cost fund transfer system Westpac launched in 2016, after violations came to light in late November, BPI spokesman Owen Cammayo said. ...

Bloomberg Uganda’s central bank held its benchmark rate at 9% saying subdued inflation provides room to shield the economy from global headwinds and increasing domestic needs for private-sector financing. The monetary policy stance remains accommodative and supportive, Governor Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile told reporters in the capital, Kampala. The central bank cut the key rate for the first time in more than ...

Bloomberg The National Bank of Kazakhstan kept interest rates on hold at a second consecutive meeting, but warned that inflation may pick up in the first quarter of next year. The base rate stayed unchanged at 9.25%, the National Bank of Kazakhstan said in a statement. The decision was forecast by six economists polled by Bloomberg. Inflation may accelerate to ...

Bloomberg Mexico’s inflation slowed to slightly below the central bank’s target for the first time since 2016, bolstering economists’ expectations that policy makers will keep cutting interest rates this month. Consumer prices rose 2.97% in November from a year earlier, less than the 3% forecast by economists in a Bloomberg survey, Mexico’s statistics agency reported on Monday. Prices increased 0.81% ...

Bloomberg Truist Financial Corp is officially a thing. The $28 billion deal combining BB&T Corp and SunTrust Banks Inc — the largest US bank merger in more than a decade — was completed after trading closed last week. That poised the rebranded Charlotte, North Carolina-based firm to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker TFC. For ...

Bloomberg Car sales in China continued to decline in November, extending a historic slump and all but ensuring a second straight annual drop for the world’s biggest auto market. Sales of sedans, sport utility vehicles, minivans and multipurpose vehicles fell 4.2% from a year earlier to 1.97 million units, the China Passenger Car Association (PCA) said, citing preliminary figures. The ...

Bloomberg Under pressure from the US, Vietnam’s ministry of finance is proposing to reduce tariffs on some American agriculture products, from chicken to apples. The government is working to alleviate US concerns over Vietnam’s growing trade surplus. At the request of the US, Vietnam now is reviewing duties on some American products, with tariff cuts seen as a way to ...

Bloomberg Singapore, home to some of the planet’s most affluent people, shouldn’t have to worry about going hungry — except when you factor in the threat of climate change. The city state ranks top of the Global Food Security Index, a gauge of more than 100 countries developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and supported by Corteva Agriscience. But when ...

Bloomberg Japan’s economy expanded in the third quarter at a much faster pace than initially reported, as capital investment and private consumption proved much stronger than first estimated. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annualised pace of 1.8% in the three months through September from the previous quarter, faster than an initial reading of 0.2%, revised Cabinet Office data ...

Bloomberg Xiaomi Corp, the world’s fourth-largest smartphone maker, is entering Japan and taking on Apple Inc with a budget-friendly smartphone and a connected fitness tracker. The company is making the Mi Note 10 Android smartphone available in Japan for immediate pre-order to be shipped on December 16. Priced from 52,800 yen ($486), the handset has a high-resolution 108-megapixel camera, a ...