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Say “equities trading,” and HSBC Holdings Plc won’t be the first bank to come to mind. Or the second or third. It doesn’t even reach the top 10. Yet its recent efforts to bulk up in this area make a lot of sense. Never mind that investment banks globally are struggling in equities as automation and regulation eat into wafer-thin ...

An auction of two is one drop-out from being no auction at all. Just look at Sky Plc. The British satellite broadcaster has rival suitors in Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. and Comcast Corp., with a potential backup in the form of Walt Disney Co. But there’s still no guarantee that a bidding war will ensure Sky fetches a full price. ...

The European Union faces another existential crisis, and the European Central Bank (ECB) will need to do whatever it takes to staunch it again. So far, it’s showed little inclination. By letting the turmoil continue, it risks creating a full-blown conflagration. Investors are taking fright at the threat that Italy could leave the euro. Yields on the country’ two-year bonds ...

Here we go again. The gyrations in India’s biggest state-run oil explorer, whose stock was down more than 11.5 percent at one point last week, are a reminder that a nightmare investors thought was over might be resuming. In early 2009, when global oil prices had collapsed from their pre-financial-crisis high, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. caused a flutter by accusing ...

Brokers tired of dwindling bonuses may find riches await them in Vietnam. Local securities companies have been making some high-profile hires in recent months. Mike Lynch, formerly a managing director at CIMB Group Holdings Bhd. in New York, moved to Ho Chi Minh City just over a year ago to head institutional equity sales at Saigon Securities Inc., the biggest ...

Will Ethiopia become “the China of Africa”? The question often comes up in an economic context: Ethiopia’s growth rate is expected to be 8.5 percent this year, topping China’s projected 6.5 percent. Over the past decade, Ethiopia has averaged about 10 percent growth. Behind those flashy numbers, however, is an undervalued common feature: Both countries feel secure about their pasts ...

Bloomberg Stocks declined, while Treasuries and the dollar rallied as the escalating political crisis in Italy engulfed markets. The S&P 500 Index dropped for a third session, following the biggest decline since March in the Stoxx Europe 600 Index, as Italian political turmoil lead to gridlock and set the course for another election. The flight from risk began in Italy’s ...

Bloomberg It looks like the debt crisis days of 2012 all over again for investors, as Italian, Portuguese and Greek bond yields surged and billionaire George Soros warned of an “ existential threat” to the European Union. The trigger was the prospect of anti-EU, nationalist parties in Italy turning a repeat election into a de facto referendum on Italy’s membership ...

Bloomberg The Fed should slow its pace of policy normalisation to help re-align price expectations around 2 percent and maintain the credibility of its inflation target, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said on Tuesday in Tokyo. “Inflation expectations in the US remain somewhat low, suggesting that further normalisation may not be necessary to keep inflation near ...

Bloomberg Bad loans at India’s five biggest state-run banks were about 456.8 billion rupees ($6.8 billion) more than the lenders had assessed. Audits by the regulator for the year ended March 31, 2017, revealed the discrepancies, triggering large losses as the banks increased provisions. If you add IDBI Bank Ltd., which doesn’t feature among the biggest but got the largest ...