Aurelia Butler

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SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s foreign exchange authorities on Friday said they agreed with the National Pension Service to expand a currency swap line to $50 billion from the current $35 billion to defend the tumbling won against the dollar. “The foreign exchange authorities believe that the FX swap with the National Pension Service can work to alleviate the supply-demand imbalance in the foreign exchange market by absorbing the National Pension Service’s spot dollar purchase demand when the currency market is unstable,” the finance ministry said in a statement.The move is seen as an indirect intervention into the spot dollar-won market because the swap line allows the fund to borrow from the central bank’s foreign exchange reserves instead of buying dollars in the onshore currency market. The won slid to 1,393.0 per dollar early on Friday, the weakest level since April 16 and nearing a key resistance level of 1,400 closely watched by the market participants. More

SEOUL (Reuters) – The finance ministers of South Korea and Japan will hold a bilateral meeting in Seoul on June 25, South Korea’s finance ministry said on Friday. The bilateral meeting takes place two months after Choi Sang-mok and his Japanese counterpart Shunichi Suzuki vowed to take appropriate steps to stabilize excessive volatility in their currencies during their meeting in Washington DC. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Billionaire Mike Bloomberg has given nearly $20 million to help Democratic President Joe Biden’s re-election effort against Republican former President Donald Trump, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.Bloomberg’s contribution included $19 million to an independent pro-Biden group known as Future Forward or FF PAC, and over $900,000 to the Biden Victory Fund, which is an amalgamation of the Biden campaign and Democratic Party committees, the sources added, asking not to be identified. The donations were first reported by the Washington Post. The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who spent $1 billion of his own money on a failed 2020 presidential bid in the Democratic primaries, injected at least $100 million to help Biden’s campaign against Trump in Florida in 2020. Trump, who lost the overall 2020 race to Biden, had won in Florida by over three percentage points.Biden and Trump have mostly been tied in national polls. Democrats have maintained an overall cash advantage over Trump and the Biden campaign continues to have a considerably larger war chest. Biden’s campaign reported $84 million in the bank at the end of April, compared to $49 million reported by Trump.However, Biden campaign’s fundraising in April lagged Trump’s for the first time, after the former president ramped up his joint operation with the Republican National Committee and headlined high-dollar fundraisers.Pro-Trump spending groups have spent more than $25 million since Trump clinched the Republican nomination on March 6, Federal Election Commission records show, compared to more than $15 million spent by Biden’s allies during the same time. More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets.Japanese inflation goes under the microscope on Friday, with scrutiny likely to be magnified more than usual given the yen’s slide toward record lows, rising oil prices and the Bank of Japan’s cautious approach to normalizing monetary policy. Sentiment across the continent on Friday may be clouded by Thursday’s fall in U.S. stocks and bonds and rise in the dollar, tempting investors to lock in gains – Asian stocks hit a two-year peak this week, and world stocks hit all-time highs.As seems to be the case more and more lately, China is the gloomy exception. Blue chip shares slid to a two-month low on Thursday and are on track for their fifth weekly loss in a row, and the yuan slumped to its weakest level against the dollar since November.Trade tensions between China and the West continue to unnerve investors. German Economy Minister Robert Habeck stirred the pot on Thursday, saying in Seoul that South Korea and Germany both aim to diversify away from China, broaden their raw material suppliers and reduce their dependence on critical products.Oil prices continue their march higher, with U.S. WTI and Brent crude futures both hitting their highest levels since April 30. WTI is now up 13.5% from its June 4 low and has risen in all but two of the 11 trading days since then, and Brent is up 12% and has risen in all but three sessions. It’s early days, but central banks will be aware of the inflationary impact a prolonged rise in oil prices could have, none more so than the Bank of Japan. With the yen near record lows against the dollar, the rising dollar-denominated price of oil is crucial for a country that imports well over 90% of its energy. The yen fell back to 159.00 per dollar on Thursday, deep in ‘intervention’ territory. Could traders push it closer toward 160.00 level and really test Tokyo’s resolve? The U.S. Treasury on Thursday said no major trading partner appeared to manipulate its currency last year, but it added Japan to a foreign exchange “monitoring list,” alongside other Asian countries China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore.The latest inflation figures from Japan, meanwhile, are expected to show annual core inflation stripping out food and energy likely rebounded in May to 2.6% from 2.2% in April. Headline inflation, at 2.5% in April, likely rose also – Goldman Sachs economists are penciling in 2.9%.Friday’s Asia/Pacific regional calendar also sees the release of the first PMI reports for June, namely preliminary readings of factory and services activity this month in Japan, Australia and India. In the corporate world, Softbank (OTC:SFTBY) Group holds its annual general shareholders meeting.Here are key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Friday:- Japan inflation (May)- Japan, Australia, India PMIs (June)- Softbank AGM More

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese authorities are ready to take action against speculative and excessively volatile moves in the currency market that hurt the economy, the country’s top currency diplomat Masato Kanda said on Friday.”It’s not intended to change the market’s trend,” and instead aimed at smoothing excessive volatility in the currency market, Kanda told reporters, when asked about exchange-rate intervention.”As long as currency rates move stably in line with fundamentals, there’s no need to intervene. By contrast, if there are speculative, excessive volatility in the market, we will take resolute action,” he said.Kanda said he did not see a problem with Japan being added to the U.S. currency monitoring list, adding that it was assessed according to mechanical criteria.The U.S. Treasury on Thursday said no major trading partner appeared to manipulate its currency last year, but it added Japan to a foreign exchange monitoring list alongside China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and Germany, which were on the previous list. More

The justice department will not pursue allegations that TikTok misled U.S. consumers about their data security in the forthcoming suit, but will instead charge the company of children’s privacy violations, the report said, citing people familiar with the decision.The department plans to drop one part of the complaint, which claims that TikTok deceived U.S. consumers by failing to inform them that China-based employees of its parent company would have access to their personal and financial information, according to the report.The DOJ, FTC and TikTok did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.Earlier this week, Reuters reported that the FTC had referred to the DOJ a complaint against TikTok and its parent over potential violations of children’s privacy.Separately, TikTok and ByteDance on Thursday urged a U.S. court to strike down a law they say will ban the popular short video app in the United States on Jan. 19 next year. More

ACCRA (Reuters) -Ghana has reached an agreement in principle with its bondholders for the restructuring of $13 billion worth of international debt, three sources told Reuters on Thursday, on the heels of a deal finalised with official creditors earlier this month.The deal will see bondholders take a haircut on principal of up to 37% and maturity of the bonds lengthened, two of the sources said.The West African gold and cocoa producing nation defaulted on most of its $30 billion in external debt in 2022, under the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and higher global interest rates and surging debt.Like Zambia, Ghana also signed up for debt treatment under the G20 Common Framework, a process designed to facilitate quick debt overhauls and to bring the newest large bilateral lender, China, into the process. Zambia’s bondholders signed off on its restructuring earlier this month, after the southern African copper producer became the first African country to default during the pandemic.For Ghana, “things are pretty close. We can expect an announcement by next week,” one source said, asking not to be named because they were not authorised to speak to media.The other two sources said the announcement could come as soon as Friday.Ghana’s finance ministry and the Paris Club, an alliance of creditor nations, could not immediately be reached for comment due to the late hour.Ghana started formal talks with two groups of bondholders in mid-March – a group of Western asset managers and hedge funds and another one including regional African banks.The negotiations, however, stalled in April after the proposed deal failed to meet the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) debt sustainability analysis requirements, forcing both sides to regroup to find a suitable solution.The three sources said the deal had since fit into a revised IMF debt framework on Ghana shared with bondholders earlier, resulting in the agreement in principle.The world’s No.2 cocoa producer earlier this month agreed a pact with its official creditor committee to formalise a debt restructuring deal reached in January.The outlines of the agreement paved the way for the IMF executive board to hold a June 28 meeting on Ghana to consider a second review of its $3 billion loan, three-year package and the release of the next tranche of $360 million. More