Banking

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank will take the “necessary steps” to get inflation down even if that means increasing interest rates more rapidly than currently anticipated and eventually to levels that slow the broader economy. Policy makers raised the benchmark lending rate by a quarter point at their meeting last week, the first increase since December 2018, and signaled six more hikes of that…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – The obituaries for the London interbank offered rate may have been written, but as businesses, consumers and investors brace for a likely tightening of U.S. monetary policy it remains a keenly watched bellwether for financial conditions — for now at least. The three-month dollar rate, one of the few of the Libor suite to get a temporary reprieve and still be published until mid next year, has risen in…

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…