China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Hong Kong coincided with the official start of the China Bond Connect program with Hong Kong that gives offshore investors another way to access the mainland’s $10 trillion debt market. Although the link between China’s mainland and offshore bond markets may look ceremonial, for the People’s Bank of China it could help set the ...
Read More »Toshiba’s trash becomes someone else’s treasure
Toshiba Corp. forgot to add its cardboard box of bits and bobs to the corporate garage sale. The flailing Japanese group is in the process of selling its prized chips business for $20 billion in badly needed funds, having already hived off a medical device unit and nuclear power. And it continues to consider selling or taking public the Swiss ...
Read More »Hong Kong needs to crack the enigma code
Thrill-seekers in Hong Kong who want to gamble in casinos usually have to take a bumpy, hour-long ferry ride to Macau. Those who crave excitement without leaving the city might do just as well punting on Hong Kong’s small-cap stocks. Structural weaknesses and a reluctance by regulators to delist miscreant companies has turned Hong Kong’s $4.6 trillion stock market into ...
Read More »Haven assets advance as missile test rattles traders
Bloomberg A risk-off mood seeped into markets on Tuesday, with haven assets including gold and the Japanese yen climbing and stocks slipping in the wake of an apparent milestone in North Korea’s weapons program. Early market optimism in Asia — sparked by bullish American economic data yesterday — ebbed as North Korea said it successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, ...
Read More »Hong Kong stock market tumbles most in eight months
Bloomberg Hong Kong stocks sank the most since November as profit taking in some of the city’s top performing shares sparked a wider selloff. The Hang Seng Index dropped as much as 2.1 percent before paring declines to 1.5 percent at the close. Tencent Holdings Ltd., Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd. and Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. were the biggest losers on ...
Read More »Banks dump $15bn bonds in India tug-of-war with foreigners
Bloomberg India’s $750 billion sovereign-debt market is caught in a tug of war between foreign investors and state-run banks, the biggest holders of the securities. As lenders sold Rs95,200 crore ($14.7 billion) of sovereign bonds last quarter, overseas funds added more than Rs42,200 crore to their holdings of the debt. The dichotomy is stemming from the potential for future gains ...
Read More »â€˜Exchanger programme’ of Emirates NBD sees 245 percent growth
Dubai / Emirates Business Emirates NBD, a leading bank in the region and a pioneer in private sector CSR volunteering in the UAE, has announced that its award-winning Exchanger programme has completed thirteen thousand seven hours of volunteering so far this year, thus coming close to completing its fifteen-thousand-hour target for 2017. The Exchanger programme which has grown 245% since ...
Read More »BOE facilities staff plans to go on strike in dispute over pay
Bloomberg Bank of England (BOE) facilities staff voted to go on strike for four days in a dispute over pay in the first action of its kind at the central bank in 50 years, according to a labor union. Ninety five percent of Unite’s members in the BOE’s maintenance, security and the governors’ private offices — known as the parlours ...
Read More »Santander witnesses first-half profit rising
Bloomberg Banco Santander SA said its takeover of failing Banco Popular Espanol SA will have a minimal impact on first half earnings, with the bank set to post a profit of 3.6 billion euros ($4.1 billion). Spain’s largest lender also set the price of its 7.07 billion-euro capital increase, saying it will sell about 1.5 billion shares at 4.85 euros ...
Read More »UK banks told to justify consumer credit as risks mount
Bloomberg The Bank of England told UK banks to prove that their policies on credit cards, personal loans and other types of consumer lending won’t leave them weaker in a downturn. The BOE’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) said on Tuesday that firms need to show that they’re not underestimating the risks of consumer credit given the current “benign economic environment.†...
Read More »