national city bank

Sources: Bloomberg: Hong Kong Banks Told To Hold Stress Tests Assuming $89 Billion In Outflows ChinaDaily: HKAB: Banks May Slow Credit Growth FT: Hong Kong Tests Banks’ Ability To Survive Outflows Market Watch: Hong Kong Banks Asked to Conduct Stress Tests Hong Kong banks will conduct another stress test to see whether they could withstand capital outflows of HK$650 billion ($83.52 billion) in customer deposits. Since late 2008, the amount of deposits in Hong Kong banks has grown rapidly by HK$1.38 trillion ($177 billion). As liquidity is tightening and the United States may soon raise interest rates, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the de facto central bank, requested banks to test whether they could survive if customers withdrew half of such new deposits in six to twelve months. “When the US ends its quantitative easing, monetary policy and global liquidity will tighten, and this may cause more fund outflows in Hong Kong,” said Paul Lee, an analyst at Haitong International...

Sources: FT: New Trade Routes: Latin America FT: China demand drives road and rail traffic China Daily: China to Increase Trade with Latin America Over the past decade, Latin America has been hard at work focusing on infrastructure and promoting trade with some of the world’s fastest growing economies in an effort to shed the image of financial instability that marked the region in the 1990s. Fortunately, the effort has paid off as poverty is diminishing in many Latin America countries and the middle class is increasing, all largely in part due to the vast expansion of commodity-based trade. One of Latin America’s biggest trade partners is China. The fast growth of the Chinese economy has increased demand for many Latin America commodities such as Argentine soya, Brazilian iron ore, Chilean copper, and Peruvian gold. Trade between Latin America and China has increased tremendously in the past ten years. For instance, in 1999, trade between the two regions totaled $8 billion. However, b...