Banking News

The Trump administration wrapped up the latest round of trade talks in Beijing, noting a commitment by China to buy more U.S. agricultural goods, energy and manufactured items. China and the U.S. concluded three days of talks on Wednesday with a cautious sense of optimism that the world’s two biggest economies might be able to reach a deal that ends their bruising trade war. In a statement, the office of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the two sides considered ways to “achieve fairness, reciprocity, and balance in trade relations.” Officials discussed the need for any deal to include “ongoing verification and effective enforcement,” USTR said. The U.S. will decide on the next steps after officials report back to Washington. President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping have given their officials until March 1 to reach an accord on “structural changes” to China’s economy on issues such as the forced transfer of American technology, intellect...

Brexit returns as the dominant driver for the pound this week as Parliament debates U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s divorce deal. Sterling lost over 5 percent in 2018 as fears of a hard exit from the European Union grew, and the currency’s direction this year will depend on whether lawmakers will be able to avoid the U.K. crashing out of the bloc on March 29. Lawmakers will vote on the Brexit deal on Jan. 15, BBC editor Norman Smith said in a Twitter post, citing unidentified people in the U.K. government. “Brexit headlines that have been largely absent over the Christmas period should stage a return and dominate the price action in the pound in coming days,” Credit Agricole SA strategists including Valentin Marinov wrote in a note. Though lawmakers may choose May’s “imperfect deal” rather than no deal, the chances of trying to reopen negotiations with the EU or even delaying the March 29 exit cannot be ruled out, they said. The pound largely held its ground ab...

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said he wouldn’t resign if President Donald Trump asked him to do so, addressing months of criticism from the White House about the central bank’s decisions to raise interest rates. Trump has repeatedly criticized the Federal Reserve interest rate increases under Powell and last month privately  discussed  firing Powell following the central bank’s most recent rate hike. Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, later said that the president knows “now” that he cannot fire the Fed chair unless it’s for cause. Powell, speaking Friday at an American Economic Association meeting in Atlanta, deflected a question about whether he would meet with Trump, something the White House said both Powell and Trump want to do. “Meetings between presidents and Fed chairs do happen,” Powell said. “Nothing has been scheduled, and I don’t really have anything to report on that.” Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlo...

China’s foreign currency holdings rose for a second month, countering concerns over capital outflows amid a slowing economy and trade pressures. Reserves increased to $3.073 trillion in December from $3.062 trillion the previous month, the People’s Bank of China said Monday. That slightly exceeded the median estimate of $3.072 trillion. "The dollar weakened in December, boosting the valuation of yen and euro assets," said Wen Bin, a researcher at China Minsheng Banking Corp. in Beijing who was the most accurate forecaster. Without that valuation effect, reserves would have fallen $2.5 billion, according to Bloomberg Economics calculations. Depreciation pressure on the yuan has weakened slightly, with the market now expecting the Fed to slow its pace of rate hikes, Bloomberg economists  wrote  in a note on Jan 4. As a result, the People’s Bank of China may have slowed its intervention in the FX market, they wrote. China’s international balance of payments conti...

Draghi flagged 'the threat of protectionism' but still ended the central bank's €2.6 trillion money printing stimulus programme. The boss of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, has warned that Donald Trump’s trade war is hurting the eurozone. Unveiling weaker growth forecasts in Frankfurt on Thursday, Mr Draghi flagged “the threat of protectionism”. “When we look at all these drivers of the recovery, yes, it is true, it is just weaker. It is just weaker and it’s not just one off, it has been weaker for a while,” he said. “The risks surrounding the euro area growth outlook can still be assessed as broadly balanced. However, the balance of risk is moving to the downside owing to the persistence of uncertainties related to geopolitical factors, the threat of protectionism, vulnerabilities in emerging markets and financial market volatility.” Nevertheless, the ECB also confirmed that this month will mark the end of its €2...

Apple’s first revenue warning in nearly 12 years sent European shares sliding on Thursday with the tech sector particularly badly bruised as chipmakers which supply to the iPhone maker fell sharply. The pan-European STOXX 600 fell 0.7 percent as Europe joined a selloff in Asia with the Apple warning compounding fears of slowing global growth. Apple’s Frankfurt-listed shares fell 8.9 percent after the tech giant cut its revenue forecast, blaming weaker iPhone sales in China, whose economy has been hit by an ongoing trade war with the U.S. Chipmakers who supply parts to Apple were the worst-hit. Shares in AMS, which provides the facial recognition sensors used in the latest iPhones, fell 19.4 percent to the bottom of the STOXX. Dialog Semiconductor tumbled 7.8 percent, while Infineon, ASML, ASM International , Logitech, and STMicroelectronics fell 3.4 to 5.9 percent. The tech sector was the worst-performing, down 2.4 percent while only telecoms stayed in the black. Luxury go...

European shares posted their biggest daily gain since June 2016 as buoyant U.S. job data and hopes of better Sino/U.S. trade relations boosted shares after a gloomy week during which a rare revenue warning from Apple caused havoc. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell also reassured investors concerned about a U.S. economic slowdown, saying the central bank would be sensitive to the downside risks currently priced in the market. Europe’s STOXX 600 rose 2.8 percent, with strong gains across the region’s bourses. “A solid set of job numbers and some comfortable words from the chairman of the Federal Reserve have been just the ticket to get markets into bullish mode”, said IG analyst Chris Beauchamp. Stocks sensitive to trade tensions led the gains. Mining companies .SXPP jumped 5.4 percent, the top gainer as copper prices recovered on news of new trade talks between China and the United States. Autos .SXAP, which suffered in 2018 from the trade dispute, jumped 4.5 p...

President Donald Trump threatened to keep the U.S. government partially shut for months or years on Friday after he and Democratic leaders failed to resolve their dispute over Trump’s request for $5.6 billion to build a wall on the Mexican border. After Democratic congressional leaders refused Trump’s requests at a meeting in the White House Situation Room, the Republican president threatened to take the controversial step of declaring a national emergency and building the wall without congressional approval. Trump is withholding his support for a bill that would fully fund the government until he secures money for the wall. As a result, around 800,000 public workers have been unpaid, with about a quarter of the federal government closed for two weeks.

OPEC is cutting oil production more than it promised, according to former Saudi Aramco executive Sadad al-Husseini. The 14-member producer group could remove about 1 million barrels per day from the market by the end of January, Husseini says. OPEC agreed to slash output by 800,000 bpd last month to prevent a price-crushing supply glut in the oil market. The oil market should prepare for a bullish surprise from OPEC in January, according to a former Saudi Aramco executive The 14-member oil producer group will likely deliver a deeper output cut in January than it promised last month, said Sadad al-Husseini, founder of Husseini Energy. Market analysts could see OPEC production fall by about 1 million barrels per day from October levels this month, Husseini said. Last month, OPEC agreed to take 800,000 bpd off the market. Pledges from 10 other producers aligned with OPEC, including Russia, brought total output cuts to 1.2 million bpd. "It's working very...

Oil and gas business activity in Texas and neighboring states was roughly unchanged in the fourth quarter after 10 straight quarters of gains, a Dallas Fed survey shows. Following an oil price collapse, executives in the region think U.S. crude will end 2019 at $59.97 on average — lower than 2017's closing price. Company sentiment turned negative for the first time since the first quarter of 2016, when oil prices hit 12½-year lows. Oil and gas business activity in Texas and neighboring states plunged in the fourth quarter, according to the Dallas Federal Reserve. The survey from the Fed's 11th District also showed company sentiment turned negative for the first time in nearly two years and executives don't expect much of an oil price recovery in 2019. The insight is from the Dallas Fed's latest quarterly Energy Survey, which comes on the heels of a nearly 40 percent plunge in  U.S. crude oil  prices to about $45 a barrel in the final quarter of 2018. The oi...

A 200-room Premier Inn in Edinburgh is trialing the 100-kilowatt battery. The battery weighs around 5 metric tons and takes two hours to fully charge up. A hotel in Scotland has started to use a lithium-ion battery to help power its operations.  The Edinburgh Park hotel, a 200-room Premier Inn in Edinburgh, is trialing the 100-kilowatt battery with the aim of better managing its energy consumption. The battery weighs around five metric tons and takes two hours to fully charge up. It has the capacity to run the site for as much as three hours.  Major energy company E.ON supplied and installed the battery technology. In a statement Friday, the firm said the Edinburgh site was chosen to trial the battery "in part because Scotland is a large producer of renewable power, such as wind power, which can be prone to volatility." The Premier Inn brand is owned by hospitality giant Whitbread. Other Whitbread brands include Beefeater and Brewers Fayre. E.ON ad...

From 1996 to 2016, the number of publicly listed companies in the U.S. fell by half, to 3,600, down from 7,300, according to Credit Suisse. IPO activity, meanwhile, peaked in the States in 1996, with nearly 700 IPOs. By 2017, that number was barely 100, according to CFA Institute. It's essential to move the markets forward to provide adequate access to investment opportunity for all investors. Today's public markets, which were first designed to fill the capital-raising needs of the 19th century, are out of step with capital formation in the 21st century. It's essential to move the markets forward to provide adequate access to investment opportunity for all, and not just a few, investors. Right now, the average investor has little or no access to where the real action is. Why is this happening? Because the public capital markets continue to shrink in the Western world. In the last 20 years, the U.S. stock market has undergone an alarming change. Between 1996...