27 minutes ago
Central banks collectively agree to increase dollar liquidity to ease pressure
The US Federal Reserve, along with five other central banks, has jointly announced that it will increase the frequency of its US dollar swap line agreements to daily from weekly.
The five central banks are the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank.
The frequency of the 7-day term trade will be increased from weekly to daily, beginning on March 20 and continuing until “at least” the end of April.
The monetary authority said the move “would serve as an important liquidity backstop to ease tensions in global funding markets, thereby helping to mitigate the impact of such tensions on the supply of credit to households and businesses.”
The move comes ahead of this week’s two-day Fed meeting, which announces its intentions on interest rates.
— Lim Hui Jie, Jeff Cox
25 minutes ago
CNBC Pro: From Tesla to under-the-radar battery stocks: Wall Street has a playbook for the EV boom
The opportunity in global electric vehicles is enormous, with the European market alone estimated by Bernstein to be worth US$300 billion by 2030.
While EV automakers may be an obvious play, Wall Street analysts have cited a number of stock picks across a range of sectors to make money.
Pro subscribers can read more here.
– Zavier Ong
Before an hour
FDIC sells Signature Bank assets to a unit of New York Community Bank
The FDIC announced an agreement to sell “substantially all of Signature Bank’s deposits and certain loan portfolios” to Flagstar Bank, a subsidiary of New York Community Bancorp.
The agency said the 40 former Signature branches will operate under the Flagstar name on Monday.
The agreement includes $38.4 billion in Signature assets, including $12.9 billion in loans that were purchased at a $2.7 billion discount, according to the FDIC.
However, Flagstar’s offer did not include the roughly $4 billion in deposits related to Signature’s digital banking business. The agency said it will pass those deposits directly to digital banking customers. The FDIC also said about $60 billion in loans will remain in receivership.
– Christine Wang
3 hours ago
UBS buys Credit Suisse in a $3.2 billion takeover
UBS has reached an agreement to buy its competitor Credit Suisse for $3.2 billion. Swiss regulators played a key role in facilitating the deal to quell contagion threatening the banking sector.
Credit Suisse saw its shares fall last week after its biggest investor, the National Bank of Saudi Arabia, refused to provide additional funds. Despite subsequent actions by Credit Suisse and Swiss regulators to calm investor fears – including a loan of up to 50 billion Swiss francs ($54 billion) – shares plunged 25.5% by the end of the week .
As part of the transaction, Credit Suisse shareholders will receive one UBS share for every 22.48 Credit Suisse shares. According to UBS, the merged bank will have $5 trillion in invested assets.
— Hakyung Kim
Friday, March 17, 2023 2:10 p.m. EDT
The Fed’s interest rate decision could be influenced by events in the coming days, says the WSJ’s economic correspondent
The Federal Reserve’s decision on whether to hike rates by 25 basis points or not at next week’s monetary policy meeting could depend on what happens in the coming days, said Nick Timiraos, chief economics correspondent at the Wall Street Journal.
The Fed is expected to approve a quarter point, or 25 basis point, rate hike at next week’s meeting. However, market watchers say the central bank’s next rate decision over the past week has become less certain amid the banking crisis.
“I’m hearing the same thing everyone else is hearing, which is that there’s a reason to go to 25 and there’s a reason to skip,” he said on CNBC’s The Exchange. “I think it really depends on what happens over the next few days with the state of the markets and this risk of financial instability.”
– Alex Harring
Friday, March 17, 2023 3:37 pm EDT
First Republic Bank sell-off intensifies as investors look ahead to the weekend
The First Republic Bank continued downtrend in afternoon trade, falling more than 30% as investors positioned themselves in the last hour of trading this week. Friday’s nosedive has sent the stock down more than 70% since the start of the week.
The decline has also weighed on the SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE), which fell 6% on Friday and faces a weekly loss of more than 14%.
See grafic…
First Republic’s daily move
Friday, March 17, 2023 8:48 am EDT