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FILE PHOTO: The Nordea bank logo is seen at the bank’s headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, May 7, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo
March 14, 2019
HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nordea on Thursday welcomed a ruling that it and three other banks did not act negligently in issuing unapproved credit ratings and the resulting decision by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) to revoke fines worth 1.98 million euros ($2.24 million).
Nordea, the Nordic region’s largest bank, as well as SEB, Svenska Handelsbanken, and Swedbank had appealed a decision from last July by ESMA to fine each 495,000 euros for issuing credit ratings on research without authorization from the regulator.
The board of appeal on Wednesday upheld ESMA’s decision that the banks had issued illicit credit ratings but found the infringements were not committed negligently and therefore decided to revoke the fines.
Nordea said it would analyze the decision in detail before deciding whether or not to appeal to the European Court of Justice.
“Our publications of shadow ratings were made in reliance on what we thought was a clear exemption for credit research,” the bank wrote in an email to Reuters.
The unauthorized ratings were mainly produced between 2011 and 2016.
“It is clear that issuers of credit research can no longer include ‘shadow ratings’ in their credit research reports if those ratings use the AAA, BBB+ type formulations used by the credit rating agencies,” Julia Dixon, partner at law firm Linklaters said in a statement, referring to agencies like Moody’s, S&P and Fitch.
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Alexandra Hudson)
Source: OANN
President Donald Trump’s approval rating has dipped to 39 percent, according to a new Gallup poll.
That marks a drop of 4 points from the 43 percent approval he had in February. And it matches his rating from December at the start of the partial government shutdown, Gallup noted.
Here is how the poll breaks down:
- 90 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s job performance
- 4 percent of Democrats
- 33 percent of independents
The new poll was conducted March 1-10 after the unsuccessful summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and after Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen testified before the House Oversight Committee.
The poll surveyed 1,039 people. The margin of error is 4 percentage points.
Source: NewsMax Politics
FILE PHOTO: An investor looks at an electronic board showing stock information at a brokerage house in Shanghai, China September 7, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo
March 14, 2019
By Andrew Galbraith
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – By day, Yao Yu heads up risk control for an investment firm in the southern metropolis of Shenzhen. By night, he goes on the prowl for his own business, Ratingdog, sniffing out data that could bring clarity to China’s notoriously opaque bond market.
Yao and a team of about a dozen part-time analysts scour information from China’s exchanges and clearing houses to produce ratings, analyses and pricing models for new bonds. Their findings are then posted to a public WeChat account that bears Ratingdog’s logo – a smiling, sunglasses-wearing border collie.
Since Yao founded the service in 2017, Ratingdog’s free YY Rating, YY Valuation and YY Pricing products have become widely used points of reference for investors and analysts wary of unreliable credit ratings provided by official agencies in the world’s third-largest bond market.
“In China, for fixed income, we need these kinds of services,” said Shen Yi, chief executive officer of Shanghai ShenYi Investment Co, referring to companies such as Ratingdog. “There’s a lot of space in the market for good information.”
Two defaults this year highlight the gap between official ratings and the Shenzhen upstart, which investors say is the country’s leading provider of free, independent credit research.
(For a graphic on ‘China corporate bond defaults’ click https://tmsnrt.rs/2ChVjf7)
On Jan. 29, China’s state-backed Minsheng Investment Group, a private investment conglomerate, missed a deadline for a maturing 3 billion yuan onshore bond, belying its rock-solid AAA rating from Shanghai Brilliance Credit Rating, one of China’s four big agencies.
Ratingdog, however, had flagged Minsheng’s heavy debt burden and limited profit potential as early as 2017.
Then on Feb. 22, Qinghai Provincial Investment Group (QPIG), rated AA by three agencies including Dagong Global Credit Rating Co Ltd, became the first state-owned enterprise in decades to miss a deadline for an offshore bond coupon payment.
Ratingdog, however, had warned in 2017 of QPIG’s “very large susceptibility” to a downturn, giving it a speculative-grade rating of 7 out of 10.
Both Minsheng and QPIG subsequently made delayed payments.
(For a graphic on ‘Investors demand more from riskier debt’ click https://tmsnrt.rs/2ChWLOB)
IMPLICIT SUPPORT
While quantifying Ratingdog’s reach is difficult, Josh Sheng, chief investment officer at Shanghai Tongshengtonghui Asset Management, said a “large proportion” of domestic mutual funds and securities companies refer to its ratings and pricing. In contrast, many investors all but ignore official ratings, which rank most issuers as AA or higher, implying little default risk and giving little guidance on pricing.
That is despite efforts by Beijing to improve the quality of ratings and strengthen oversight, including freezing Dagong’s core ratings business last August for violating industry rules.
One reason for the preponderance of highly rated firms in China is an implicit assumption of state backing.
Jean-Charles Sambor, deputy head of emerging market debt at BNP Paribas Asset Management, said analysis of issuing companies has tended to focus on the likelihood of government support, rather than balance sheets.
“We basically don’t use official ratings for our investment decisions, and they’re not even very meaningful as a reference,” said Liu Xiaofang, head of investment research at Shanghai Fengshi Asset Management Ltd.
More than a month after Minsheng Investment’s technical default, and with the yield on a Shanghai-traded 4.88 percent Minsheng bond hovering above 13 percent, the company continues to boast an untarnished AAA issuer rating.
Ratingdog has rated Minsheng bonds at 7/10 since December, a level indicating “many credit issues” and a recommendation to avoid.
Shanghai Brilliance and Dagong did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
ISSUER-PAY
Drawn in part by the imminent inclusion of Chinese bonds in global indexes, foreign rating agencies have been racing to set up shop in China.
S&P Global Ratings recently became the first global agency to receive a license to rate Chinese onshore bonds. Fitch Ratings, which has established a domestic entity, and Moody’s Investors Service have also applied for licenses.
Some investors hope that the international agencies will encourage greater ratings transparency.
However, S&P Global will follow an “issuer-pay” model in China, similar to the one that domestic agencies currently use. Many investors in China have been wary of the practice, whereby ratings are given to issuers enlisting the agency’s services.
S&P provides issuer-pay ratings in other markets and says it has measures in place to guard against potential conflicts of interest. Its ratings of some Chinese issuers of both onshore and offshore debt, including QPIG, are notably different from those of domestic agencies.
But, says Ratingdog’s Yao: “There’s a problem here, and it’s a problem with overseas agencies, too, and that is: In the end, who are you serving? Is it investors or issuers?”
‘DIFFERENT ROAD’
While interest is high for Ratingdog’s products, monetizing that demand may prove difficult.
Only companies officially licensed to rate securities are permitted to charge for rating services in China.
But Yao plans to press ahead anyway, by introducing investor-paid customised research alongside its free analysis.
“Charging for services is meant to help speed up our development and expansion, but it’s also to understand real market demand,” he said. “After all, the only real demand is demand that’s willing to pay.”
Ratingdog’s growth could pose problems for it in what Hayden Briscoe, head of Asia Pacific fixed income at UBS Asset Management, calls “a very licensed regime”.
“I would suspect that he wouldn’t last for very long unless he had a proper license,” Briscoe said of Yao.
A senior rating industry source, who follows Ratingdog on WeChat, said that regulatory requirements are “very strict”, including annual audits with on-site checks conducted by regulators.
“If you give a rating, you also need to bear responsibility for it,” he said.
Yao said he is following a “different road” and not seeking a rating license, but how to operate legally is “a long-term consideration.”
BOTTOM-UP SHIFT
Ratingdog is not alone in looking to feed the market’s hunger for information. Domestic brokerages and investment banks offer sell-side credit research, often bundled for free alongside equity research.
One bank even uses a Ratingdog-like canine theme for bond analysis in its proprietary app.
BNP’s Sambor said the rise of these alternatives indicates a broader shift.
“What policymakers are trying to achieve is to make sure that investors are looking at credit research from a bottom-up perspective rather than a top-down perspective,” he said.
A “massive repricing” of onshore corporate bonds in the past 18 months has followed attempts to introduce more credit risk into the market, encouraging differentiation and better price discovery, Sambor said.
The spread of riskier 5-year AA corporate debt over AAA debt of the same tenor was 101 basis points on March 12, 56 basis points wider than at the end of 2017.
Still, even after 2018 saw a record level of corporate defaults, Chinese issuers remain relatively unlikely to default.
The marginal default rate – the proportion of the value of defaulting bonds to that of total outstanding credit bonds – was just 0.07 percent in December, according to China Central Depository and Clearing Co.
With defaults comparatively rare, developing reliable ratings will take time, said Yao, noting that global agencies and markets have had more than a century of competition and experience.
(Reporting by Andrew Galbraith; Additional reporting by Samuel Shen; Editing by Vidya Ranganathan and Philip McClellan)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Andrej Bertoncelj, Slovenian finance minister candidate, speaks at the parliament in Ljubljana, Slovenia September 6, 2018. REUTERS/Borut Zivulovic
March 13, 2019
By Marja Novak
LJUBLJANA (Reuters) – Slovenia plans to continue to run budgets at a surplus in the coming years, with a surplus of 0.6 percent of gross domestic product forecast this year after 0.8 percent in 2018, Finance Minister Andrej Bertoncelj told Reuters on Wednesday.
He said public debt was expected to fall to below 60 percent of GDP “in two to three years” after reaching some 66 percent this year, down from 70 percent in 2018.
“It is of key importance that we run a budget surplus … and reduce public debt,” Bertoncelj said in his first international interview since he took the post in September, when the minority center-left government of Prime Minister Marjan Sarec was sworn in following June’s election.
He said the government planned to reduce taxes on wages and personal income, which are above the euro zone average, which should help boost household spending, and at the same time increase tax on corporate profit to ensure a budget surplus.
The tax on corporate profit stands at 19 percent but is likely to increase to 20 percent next year and possibly to 22 percent by 2022. However, companies that invest in research and development will be able to reduce the tax rate to 5 percent.
Bertoncelj believes Slovenia will remain competitive compared with other euro zone states even after the corporate tax hike since it is likely to remain below the euro zone average.
Bertoncelj said he was aware that the economic growth of Slovenia’s trading partners was slowing down but added “we cannot talk about crisis as there is a big difference between economic slowdown and crisis”.
Export-oriented Slovenia, which managed to narrowly avoid an international bailout for its banks in 2013, increased its exports by 13.7 percent year-on-year in January after they rose by 9.2 percent in the whole of 2018.
Its main export partners are Germany, Italy, Croatia, Austria and France while main exports include cars, car parts, pharmaceutical products and household appliances.
Despite the headwinds, Bertoncelj said most forecasts show Slovenia’s economy would expand by some 3.4 percent this year, which is “a solid growth” versus 4.5 percent in 2018.
He said one of the government’s main tasks is to improve the efficiency of the public sector, which should help toward higher economic growth.
Bertoncelj said credit rating agencies might “soon” improve ratings for Slovenia. At present Slovenia holds a rating of A+ by S&P, A- by Fitch and Baa1 by Moody’s.
Earlier, Labour Minister Ksenija Klampfer outlined a plan to gradually increase the retirement age to 67 over the next 15 years from 65 at present to ease the burden of the rapidly aging population on the budget.
Bertoncelj also said the country could issue another bond to refinance its debt this year, which could be a green bond, after issuing a 1.5 billion euro 10-year bond in January but gave no further details.
(Reporting by Marja Novak; Editing by Alison Williams)
Source: OANN
Fifty-nine percent of Florida voters approve of the job Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., is doing – the highest approval rating for a Sunshine State governor in 10 years, a new Quinnipiac University poll reveals.
Only 17 percent disapprove of the Republican's job performance.
Here are highlights of the Florida poll released Wednesday:
- 82 percent of Republicans approve of the way DeSantis is handling his job, compared to 5 percent who do not.
- 42 percent of Democrats approve of his job performance, while 28 percent disapprove.
- 56 percent of independents approve of the way he is handling his job, compared to 17 percent who do not.
- 71 percent say the state's economy is "excellent" or "good."
- 27 percent say the economy is "not so good" or "poor."
- 64 percent oppose offshore drilling in the ocean, while 29 percent are in favor.
- 61 percent support DeSantis' proposal to require local law enforcement to work with federal immigration authorities, while 27 percent do not.
- 59 percent support stricter gun laws, while 37 percent are opposed.
- 57 percent oppose trained teachers and school officials being allowed to carry guns on school grounds, compared to 40 percent who are in favor.
- 50 percent approve of the job Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is doing, compared to 34 percent who disapprove.
- 42 percent approve of the way Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., is handling his job, while 38 percent disapprove.
The poll, conducted March 6-11, surveyed 1,058 Florida voters. It has a margin of error of 3.7 percent.
Source: NewsMax Politics
FILE PHOTO: Flags for U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Keep America Great!” 2020 re-election campaign are seen at Jiahao flag factory in Fuyang, Anhui province, China July 24, 2018. Picture taken July 24, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo
March 13, 2019
By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is preparing an early focus on Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, states that were instrumental to his improbable 2016 victory but where his support has softened, two campaign advisers said.
The decision to accelerate campaign organizing and eventually get the Republican president to make trips to the three states is a recognition that Trump’s path to re-election in 2020 will need to repeat some of the successes he had in 2016.
Advisers also see a need to bolster Trump’s support in Florida, a battleground state he considers his second home but where opinion polls show him struggling.
They also see an opportunity for gains in Minnesota and Colorado, two states Trump narrowly lost. The Trump team views those states as competitive places where the president can go on offense, according to the advisers, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely about the campaign strategy.
With 20 months to go until the November 2020 presidential election, Trump and his campaign team are still getting organized for what is expected to be a tough battle for a second four-year term.
Democrats seized control of the House of Representatives in last November’s congressional elections widely seen as a referendum on Trump’s storm-tossed first two years in office, while Republicans strengthened their grip on the U.S. Senate.
More than a dozen Democrats have lined up so far to challenge Trump, and some Republicans are also considering running against him.
Chris Jackson, a pollster for Ipsos, which conducts polls with Reuters, said Trump, however, looked to be in a competitive position for re-election at this point, given his approval rating is hovering between 40 percent and 45 percent.
“Presidents with an approval rating above 40 percent generally have better than 50-50 odds of winning re-election,” he said. “He’s not an underdog if you take the big picture view.”
Trump’s support among Republican voters also remains strong.
CRITICAL STATES
Trump’s win in 2016 included unexpected victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which form part of the country’s former industrial heartland. The trio of states had voted Democratic in recent presidential elections, but Trump caught Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by surprise, winning them by a mere combined 77,000 votes.
An Emerson College poll of Michigan voters released on Sunday found Trump trailing all the leading potential Democratic challengers, including an 8-percentage-point deficit to former Vice President Joe Biden, who is considering a White House bid.
A Marquette Law School poll conducted in January during a government shutdown largely blamed on Trump found the president had a 44 percent approval rating among Wisconsin voters, with 52 percent disapproving. The political tracking organization Morning Consult found Trump down 7 points among Pennsylvania voters.
Asked about the re-election strategy, a senior Trump campaign official said the early focus on the three states had nothing to do with polling.
“It is about securing victory in states where the margin of victory was close in 2016,” the official said.
The official added: “These are not given Republican states. These are Trump states. Wisconsin had not gone red since 1984 and Pennsylvania and Michigan since 1988. Trump expanded the map, and now we must protect this territory.”
Republican strategist Scott Reed, who is not connected to the Trump campaign, said the three states would be critical for Trump.
“Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan put Trump over the top, and they are clearly where this next national election will be won or lost,” said Reed, who was campaign manager for Republican nominee Bob Dole’s 1996 White House campaign.
Aides say Trump has shown a keen interest in his re-election effort. In the absence of an obvious front-runner among the Democrats, the president has concentrated his attacks on what he calls the Democrats’ trend toward socialism with their “Green New Deal.”
Trump has talked privately about some of the Democratic field, telling allies that Senator Kamala Harris of California had the best campaign rollout. He described Biden as “dumb” in a lunch with television anchors ahead of his State of the Union address on Feb. 5, a source familiar with the lunch said.
Trump’s campaign team recently showed the president a slide show outlining how to organize, tie up Republican nominating delegates and control the Republican presidential nomination process to fend off any challengers, a Republican official familiar with the presentation said.
“We are running a comprehensive, state-of-the-art campaign,” the senior campaign official said.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Machinery is seen where a new oil refinery is expected to be built by state-run oil company Pemex, in Paraiso, Mexico, December 8, 2018. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini/File Photo
March 12, 2019
By Anthony Esposito
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday denied any delay to a flagship refinery project in his home state after the deputy finance minister was quoted as saying $2.5 billion for its construction will be moved to state oil firm Pemex.
The planned investment for the Dos Bocas refinery “can go to exploration and production” for Pemex, Arturo Herrera told the Financial Times in an interview during a trip to London for meetings with investors.
However, Lopez Obrador stood by his plan to build the refinery within three years, saying the tender could be unveiled next week. In answer to a question about whether the $2.5 billion would be spent this year on the refinery, said “Yes.”
The president’s plans to fast-track construction of the new refinery in Tabasco, his home state, have concerned investors that it would take away much-needed resources from Pemex, which is creaking under $106 billion of debt.
His energy minister, Rocio Nahle, said she understood Herrera’s budget concerns but said the project was on track.
“The faster we do this project, the cheaper it will be,” she said on Mexican radio.
The conflicting statements appeared to confuse investors. Mexico’s benchmark stock index reversed gains and weakened 0.7 percent after Lopez Obrador’s rebuttal of Herrera’s comments, while the peso pared gains.
“Contradictions within the federal government do not help financial markets,” said James Salazar, an economist at bank CI Banco.
The government is under growing pressure to dispel doubts Pemex can successfully manage more than $16 billion of debt payments due by the end of next year, halt the firm’s extended oil output slide and avert a threatened credit rating downgrade to “junk.”
Finance minister Carlos Urzua said last week the government would announce new measures to support the ailing company, after unveiling a $3.9 billion bailout in February that failed to impress ratings agencies.
Herrera said the government was in talks with the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral organizations about structuring a fresh capital injection for Pemex, though he noted that those discussions were technical and no borrowing was involved, according to the Financial Times.
Lopez Obrador said it was very likely the government would make an announcement about tenders for the refinery on March 18, a national holiday that celebrates the 1938 nationalization of Mexico’s oil industry.
He also predicted Pemex would reverse its output decline by next year, with “new wells” coming on line by December under a production plan that allows Pemex to hire service companies to help explore mature fields.
He repeated that the refinery would cost between $6 billion and $8 billion, and said that work for now was focused on preparing the ground at the refinery site and readying the framework for the tender.
The refinery has already hit obstacles after the proposed construction site was cleared of protected mangrove without the correct environmental permits. The government has yet to present an environmental impact assessment for the wildlife-rich site.
Herrera said the tender framework was being prepared, but said the finance ministry needed to see a solid financial plan before releasing funds.
“We will not authorize (construction) until we have a final figure that is not very different from the original $8 billion,” said Herrera.
($1 = 19.3083 Mexican pesos)
(Reporting by Anthony Esposito, additioanl reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez and; Adriana Barrera; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: The company logo for Boeing is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
March 12, 2019
(Reuters) – Boeing Co’s shares fell more than 3 percent on Tuesday as more countries grounded the planemaker’s 737 MAX 8 aircraft amid heightened anxiety among travelers about the safety of the plane.
Malaysia, Singapore and Australia became the latest nations to ground Boeing’s best-selling line of jets, one of which also crashed in Indonesia in October.
DZ Bank became the first brokerage in nearly two years to place a “sell” rating on the stock, while setting a price target of $333 – the lowest on Wall Street.
The stock was trading at $385 before the opening bell. If Tuesday’s losses, following a 5 percent fall on Monday, stick through regular trading hours, the company would have lost more than $21 billion in market value in two days.
“News that could really harm Boeing could affect markets,” said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments in New Vernon, New Jersey.
“On whether Boeing is responsible in some way or if there is a problem in its aircraft is something investors are still trying to digest.”
The United States will mandate that Boeing implement design changes by April, but said the plane was airworthy and did not need to be grounded.
Safety experts say it is too early to speculate on what caused Sunday’s crash and black box recorders were yet to yield the cause.
(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Amy Caren Daniel; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A combination of photographs shows people using automated teller machines (ATMs) at Australia’s “Big Four” banks – Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (bottom R), Commonwealth Bank of Australia (top R), National Australia Bank Ltd (bottom L) and Westpac Banking Corp (top L). REUTERS/Staff/File photo/File Photo
March 12, 2019
By Paulina Duran and Byron Kaye
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Investors are shorting second-tier Australian banks while the majors enjoy their biggest rally in three years, as the market weighs up the long-term impact of a public inquiry that exposed widespread misconduct in the financial sector last year.
The capital shift shows investors believe higher regulatory costs will hurt smaller lenders more than the big four market leaders, whose business models – if not their reputations – emerged largely unscathed from the year-long inquiry.
Short bets on regional lenders Bendigo and Adelaide Bank <BEN.AX> and Bank of Queensland <BOQ.AX> spiked over a fifth in the weeks since the inquiry delivered its final report on Feb. 1, Refinitiv data shows. Their shares had already fallen about 15 percent in the same period.
Investors are instead putting money on the larger banks’ ability to safeguard profitability in an environment of record low mortgage growth and falling house prices.
“The regional banks will struggle to compete with the major banks,” said Azib Khan, from stockbroker Morgans Financial Ltd.
As the government-backed independent inquiry known as a Royal Commission continued through most of 2018, analysts feared it would result in anything from enforced divestments to strict controls over how much a bank could lend. But its final recommendations focused mostly on cultural changes, sparing the big lenders the prospect of tougher laws.
The inquiry wiped A$72 billion ($51 billion) from the combined valuation of the top four banks – Australia and New Zealand Banking Group <ANZ.AX>, Commonwealth Bank of Australia <CBA.AX>, National Australia Bank <NAB.AX> and Westpac Banking Corp <WBC.AX> – from its February 2018 start to the last trading week of 2018, amid constant headlines about fee-gouging, cavalier sales tactics and poor governance.
Since then, their shares have clawed back A$50 billion. The country’s biggest lender, Commonwealth Bank, is now only 4 percent below its pre-inquiry level. ANZ’s shares have risen 12 percent in the four weeks since the inquiry delivered its final report last month, their biggest one-month leap since March 2016 and within 5 percentage points of full recovery.
While the inquiry found the smaller lenders generally had behaved better than their bigger rivals, they have suffered sharper falls in lending growth and profitability in the wake of the Royal Commission.
“It’s harder for them to absorb the extra regulatory costs, and they have a lower credit rating than the majors and that means that they’ve got a higher cost of funding,” Khan said.
Recent updates from Bank of Queensland and Bendigo included the banks’ expectations of higher regulatory costs, highlighting the disadvantages of the smaller lenders.
With home loan growth of just 1 percent during the first half of the financial year, Bendigo reported below-expectation profit and flagged higher regulatory spending in the second half. Bank of Queensland also flagged lower half-yearly earnings and warned the second half of the year would be challenging.
“The increase in compliance costs and expensive funding will affect the smaller banks more than the larger banks,” said Sean Sequeira, chief investment officer at Alleron Investment Management.
Sequeira said that while his fund did not hold short positions in the banks, he agreed with the short call on Bendigo.
“They have a portfolio of reverse mortgages that leaves them with a larger exposure to property than banks with standard loan portfolios, which concerns us given the current weakness in housing.”
($1 = 1.4148 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Paulina Duran and Byron Kaye; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Source: OANN
Peru’s new Prime Minister Salvador del Solar attend a swearing-in ceremony at the government palace in Lima, Peru March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Guadalupe Pardo
March 11, 2019
LIMA (Reuters) – Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra swore in actor and former Culture Minister Salvador del Solar as his new prime minister on Monday in a cabinet shuffle that may help shore up his slipping approval ratings.
Vizcarra opted to keep Finance Minister Carlos Oliva and Energy and Mines Minister Francisco Ismodes in their posts, but changed eight other ministers, including the production and agriculture ministers.
No major policy changes were expected under del Solar, who has degrees in law and international relations but is best known for his starring roles in Spanish-language films.
Del Solar, 48, served as culture minister for about a year under former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who resigned in a graft scandal a year ago.
Vizcarra, Kuczynski’s former vice president, took office to replace Kuczynski and won broad support for pushing measures aimed at fighting corruption and taking a tougher stance with the opposition-controlled Congress.
But Vizcarra’s approval rating fell seven percentage points to 56 percent this month, according to a Datum Internacional poll last week, after reaching a high of 66 percent in January.
Presidents in Peru often reshuffle their cabinets when their approval ratings fall, though all recent presidents have ended their terms widely unpopular.
Despite occasional bouts of political turmoil, Peru has been one of Latin America’s most stable and fastest-growing economies this century.
(Reporting by Marco Aquino and Mitra Taj; Editing by Steve Orlofsksy and Tom Brown)
Source: OANN
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