Asian bank debt and shares fell on Monday after the wipeout of $17bn of Credit Suisse bonds in a takeover by UBS, sparking concern about similar debt and heralding further turmoil in European markets. HSBC shares fell 6 per cent in Hong Kong, while Standard Chartered fell 5 per cent and Bank of East Asia
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Little more than a week ago, investors thought it was a done deal that the Bank of England would press ahead with yet another increase in interest rates when its Monetary Policy Committee meets this week. By the end of last week, pricing in financial markets suggested that the chances of a policy move on
Flagstar Bank owner New York Community Bank has agreed to buy most of the operations of Signature Bank, the failed New York City-based lender. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced the deal on Sunday, one week after the US banking regulator and deposit insurer took control of Signature. The seizure came on the heels of
A unit of New York Community Bancorp has agreed to buy “substantially all” deposits and some loan portfolios of the collapsed Signature Bank, the US federal deposit agency announced on Sunday. From Monday, Flagstar Bank will acquire 40 former Signature branches, which will be rebranded under its name, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said. The
Holders of $17bn of Credit Suisse bonds will have their investment wiped out following the bank’s takeover by UBS, in a surprise move that is expected to cause ructions in European debt markets when they open on Monday. As part of the historic deal between the banks, Swiss financial regulator Finma ordered that SFr16bn of
UBS agreed to buy Credit Suisse for $3.25bn after a frantic weekend of negotiations brokered by Swiss regulators to safeguard its banking system and attempt to prevent a crisis spreading across global financial markets. The historic deal follows five days in which the Swiss establishment raced to end a deepening crisis at Credit Suisse that
The Federal Reserve and other global central banks have announced fresh measures to improve US dollar liquidity as global financial markets reel from the turmoil hitting the banking sector. In a joint statement released on Sunday, the world’s leading central banks said that they will launch daily operations to make funding available via standing swap
Plans to revamp UK bank capital rules risk a 25 per cent cut in lending to small businesses, threatening jobs and economic growth, a new study has warned. The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority announced the controversial plans to overhaul the capital treatment for small business lending in December, as part of broader proposals
The writer is managing partner and head of research at Axiom Alternative Investments Bank investors are well aware of the risks; they know that banking relies on trust and that sentiment can change quickly. The crisis now faced by Credit Suisse is, however, a previously unseen phenomenon. Every single bank failure I can remember was
Days after Vladimir Putin was hit with an international warrant for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, Xi Jinping’s first state visit to Moscow in four years is a demonstration of the Chinese leader’s commitment to Russia’s president — but is also set to show the red lines in what the pair last year dubbed a
The Biden administration is under mounting pressure to call for an expansion of the federal guarantee on bank deposits to shore up confidence in the financial system and prevent further distress among US regional banks. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which is funded by banks, guarantees deposits up to $250,000. But a growing chorus of
Smaller US banks have big problems. For now, their focus is on survival. That is why the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America has pleaded for an extension of deposit insurance to staunch the outflows. But even after stability is restored, the lending capacity of regional banks will be severely constrained. That will damage the US
The writer is an FT contributing editor The famous quantum mechanics thought experiment posits that if a cat is sealed in a box with a deadly substance, you can’t know whether it is still alive until you open said box. In the meantime, it is simultaneously alive and dead. And so it is with banking
Credit Suisse may shortly be a historic footnote. Its capital buffers meant nothing to many depositors. They went on pulling funds even after the Swiss National Bank put up SFr50bn in extra liquidity. UBS is taking the time bomb for the Swiss team. Pray the countdown will stop, stalling this bank run and any others
UBS has offered to buy Credit Suisse for up to $1bn, with Swiss authorities planning to change the country’s laws to bypass a shareholder vote on the transaction as they rush to finalise a deal before Monday. The all-share deal between Switzerland’s two biggest banks is set to be signed as soon as Sunday evening
Cash is no longer trash. Assets invested in US money market funds hit a record $5tn last week. Investors rattled by the collapse of three US banks and a crisis of confidence in smaller regional lenders scrambled for safe, liquid alternatives to park their assets. About $120bn flooded into US money market funds in the
Vladimir Putin has made a surprise visit to Mariupol, the Ukrainian city all but destroyed by his invading army last year, in an apparent show of defiance after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant accusing the Russian president of war crimes. State television showed Putin arriving at the port city by helicopter in
A week after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, a group of venture capital firms wrote to the shell-shocked start-ups they had put their money into. It was time, they said, to talk about the “admittedly not so sexy” function of treasury management. Days of scrambling to account for their companies’ funds presented a generation of founders
The Federal Reserve will keep raising its benchmark policy rate, holding it above 5.5 per cent for the rest of the year, despite turmoil across the US banking sector, according to a majority of leading academic economists polled by the Financial Times. The latest survey, conducted in partnership with the Initiative on Global Markets at
Europe’s push to make arms for Ukraine has been hobbled by a shortage of explosives, which industry insiders fear will delay efforts to boost shell production by as much as three years. Scarce supplies of gunpowder, plastic explosives and TNT have left industry unable to rapidly meet expected EU orders for Ukraine, regardless of how
BlackRock’s consulting arm warned Silicon Valley Bank, the California-based lender whose failure helped spark a banking crisis, that its risk controls were “substantially below” its peers in early 2022, several people with direct knowledge of the assessment said. SVB hired BlackRock’s Financial Markets Advisory Group in October 2020 to analyse the potential impact of various