banks

HONG KONG (Reuters) –Morgan Stanley is cutting at least 50 investment banking jobs in Asia Pacific, three sources said, becoming the latest among global banks to scale back operations in the region mainly due to a slump in China markets. The layoffs affect around 13% of the Wall Street bank’s Asia investment banking workforce of 400 in the region, according to one of the sources. Bankers based in Hong Kong and mainland China are going to be affected the most, they said. All of the sources declined to be named as they were not authorised to speak to media. A Morgan Stanley spokesperson declined to comment. Bloomberg first reported the job cuts on Wednesday. The cuts are one the largest to its China-focused investment banking team and follow similar measures by other banks also stung by decline in deal making activities in China amid a slowing economy. In January, Bank of America laid off around 20 bankers in the region, following a flurry of investment bank downsizing by UBS, Citigroup and other boutique firms. Morgan Stanley on Tuesday reported a…

Iran’s attack on Israel over the weekend represents the possibility of a wider conflict in the Middle East and has made global markets more worried about uncontrollable risks. Capital Economics said that heightened tensions in the Middle East after Iran attacked Israel may give the Federal Reserve more reason to slow down the pace of raising interest rates, as soaring oil prices will disrupt the Fed’s battle with central banks. Neil Shearing, chief economist at Capital Economics, said in a report on Sunday that the main risk facing the world is whether Iran and Israel will escalate their conflict into a broader regional conflict, and how the energy market will react. He said that rising oil prices will make inflation targets in advanced economies more complex, but only when energy prices become a key driver of core inflation rates will they likely have a substantial impact on central bank decision-making. According to the White House, it is working hard to prevent the situation from expanding further. Biden is said to have communicated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the…

Recently, the sharp rise in international gold prices has attracted the attention of investors from almost all over the world. Behind the frenzied buying in the gold market, another safe-haven asset, U.S. Treasury bonds, presents a completely different scene of depression. A series of weak performance at U.S. Treasury auctions has stoked investor concerns that the market will struggle to absorb the massive issuance of Treasury debt. In the past week, after weak demand for the US$39 billion 10-year Treasury bond auction, the bond market sell-off triggered by higher-than-expected U.S. CPI in March intensified. Investors also showed little interest in the three-year and 30-year U.S. Treasury auctions. Behind the growing caution among bond market investors is the growing belief that U.S. inflation is not yet fully under control and that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates at multi-decade highs in the coming months or even years. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note, known as the “anchor of global asset pricing” and the benchmark for pricing borrowing rates from mortgages to corporate loans, closed at around 4.5% last…

“The U.S. dollar is our currency, but it’s your trouble” – As the U.S. dollar has been rising against the backdrop of recent declines in expectations of a Federal Reserve interest rate cut, this famous quote from former U.S. Treasury Secretary Connally more than half a century ago seems to be coming back again. It has become a major problem for many policymakers in emerging markets… Many investors in the foreign exchange market have recently been paying attention to whether the Japanese government will intervene to prevent the yen, which has already fallen below the 153 mark, from weakening further. But in fact, in emerging markets, many economies face exchange rate pressures no less than Japan. Some locals said the foreign exchange market has become a key battleground, as the dollar’s recent surge has put tremendous pressure on an increasing number of emerging economies to intervene. Market data shows that as investors continue to buy gold and the US dollar, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index weakened for the third consecutive day on Friday, approaching the low of the year. Almost…