Banking

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Bank of England officials have largely decided to keep quiet in the run-up to February’s crunch meeting, allowing expectations to solidify for another interest rate increase. Since the bank hiked rates in December, few of the nine-member Monetary Policy Committee have spoken, and none are scheduled to before their next meeting. That’s despite increasing market bets that another increase will come on Feb. 3.The relative silence breaks from the effusive commentary…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – Jerome Powell’s first four years as Federal Reserve chair were defined by saving the U.S. economy from the historic challenge of the pandemic. His second term — and his legacy — will be about saving the economy from overheating. Powell and his colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee, who meet Tuesday and Wednesday, are wrestling with how to quell the highest inflation in a generation without stalling…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Nigeria’s central bank kept its benchmark interest rate at a six-year low to help spur economic growth as it sees inflation abating.All 10 members of the monetary policy committee who attended the two-day meeting voted to keep the rate at 11.5% for an eighth consecutive time, Governor Godwin Emefiele said at a briefing Tuesday in the capital, Abuja. Eight of nine economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected the unchanged stance. The MPC held rates…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Standard Chartered Plc has been handed a record fine by the U.K.’s top banking regulator after a spreadsheet error resulted in the emerging markets-focused lender overestimating its access to U.S. dollar funding.The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulatory Authority imposed a 46.6 million pound ($61 million) penalty on the lender for five reporting errors between March 2018 and May 2019, according to a statement Monday. That was compounded in one case by…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Nigeria’s third-largest lender by market value named a new chairman after investors wrestled for control of the 127-year institution. FBN Holdings Plc, owner of First Bank of Nigeria, on Friday received approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria to appoint Ahmad Abdullahi to the role, after Remi Babalola resigned, pressured by a “contest by some significant shareholders for control,” the regulator’s spokesman Osita Nwanisobi said by phone from the capital, Abuja. An FBN spokeswoman…

LAGOS (Capital Martket in Africa) -Cash in circulation in Nigeria rose to a record in October despite a push by authorities to engender cashless transactions and control money supply in Africa’s most populous nation. The amount of naira notes and coins circulating in the economy increased 4.6% to 3 trillion naira ($7.3 billion) in October from the previous month, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria data. Broad money supply, or M2, surged to a record 41.4…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africsa) – A senior Senate Democrat suggested that uncertainty over who will run the Federal Reserve has limited action to rein in U.S. inflation and urged President Joe Biden to renominate Fed Chair Jerome Powell for another term. “I think we’ve got issues revolving around inflation that he can’t do much about as long as he’s not confirmed,” Montana Senator Jon Tester said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Powell “needs to…