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      China Stocks Surge After Government Measures to Boost Economy

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      The government has fired up investors by encouraging banks to lend more to buyers of stock and real estate, but economists say more stimulus is needed.Share prices surged as trading resumed on Tuesday in mainland China following a weeklong national holiday, as investors rushed in to make bullish bets that Beijing’s leaders are committed to providing stimulus for the faltering Chinese economy.Before the break, the Chinese government jolted stock markets sharply higher with a package of measures aimed at halting the cycle of falling real estate prices and weakening consumer confidence.The central bank and other top financial agencies announced on Sept. 24 that they were cutting interest rates, reducing the minimum down payments for mortgages, and encouraging banks to lend more money for investors to buy shares.Two days later, the ruling Politburo issued an uncommonly blunt call for more to be done to help the economy. Several municipal governments soon followed by trimming or dismantling their restrictions on real estate purchases as a way to stabilize the housing market in their cities.

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      China’s CSI 300 Index
      As of Oct. 8, 2024 9:43 a.m. local time.Source: FactSetBy The New York TimesThe CSI 300, an index of large companies traded in Shanghai and Shenzhen, soared 25 percent in heavy trading over the five sessions before the holiday. Market operators tested their systems on Monday in anticipation of another influx of activity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Victims of Stanford Financial’s Fraud Scheme May Soon Be Paid. Some Already Sold Their Claim.

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      Not having much insight into what may happen next in the case of a fraud orchestrated by Robert Allen Stanford, many of the victims sold the rights to any future payout.It’s been 15 years since Thomas Swingle first learned that about $1 million of his family’s savings had gone up in smoke, after the financier Robert Allen Stanford was exposed for having sold billions in fraudulent certificates of deposit to investors around the world.The memory of those days is still painful.“It was literally a life-changing event,” Mr. Swingle, 72, said of the $7 billion scheme that unraveled in early 2009. “It is like someone hit you in the chest with a sledgehammer.”Now, victims of Mr. Stanford’s company, Stanford Financial, are on the verge of recouping some of their losses, but Mr. Swingle and his wife, Cindy Finch, have to contend with another decision they made: In 2021, they agreed to sell their claim to any future settlement to an investment fund for around $60,000.That means they won’t get a penny of the funds that are about to be disbursed. Instead, it’ll all go to the claim buyer.It’s a decision fraud victims have to agonize over in the wake of a big financial scam: Large investors offer them cash in exchange for the rights to any future payment. Many small investors who don’t have much insight into what might happen next may feel they don’t have a choice but to settle for a quick lump sum, rather than wait for a future payment that may never come.When Mr. Swingle and Ms. Finch sold their claim, he said, it appeared Stanford’s defrauded customers were unlikely to get anything back at all. Had the couple held on to the rights, they might be able to claim as much as $350,000.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Huge Civil Fraud Penalty Draws Skepticism From Appeals Court

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      A five-judge New York appellate panel questioned both the size and validity of a judgment of more than $450 million against Donald J. Trump at a hearing.A New York appeals court expressed skepticism on Thursday about a civil judgment of more than $450 million that a trial judge had ordered former President Donald J. Trump to pay after finding that he had fraudulently inflated his wealth.At a hearing in Manhattan, members of a five-judge panel questioned both the size of the judgment and the validity of the case, which New York’s attorney general brought against the former president and his family business two years ago.While some of the judges appeared to acknowledge the substance of the attorney general’s case, several of the panel’s questions suggested concern about whether the office had exceeded its jurisdiction. And the tenor of many of their questions indicated the possibility that the court could whittle down the huge judgment and potentially deal a blow to the attorney general, Letitia James.Justice Peter H. Moulton, who seemed unswayed by many of the arguments by Mr. Trump’s lawyers, nonetheless said that “the immense penalty in this case is troubling.”The trial judge in the case, Arthur F. Engoron, found Mr. Trump liable for civil fraud last year, concluding that he had lied about his wealth to secure favorable loan terms and other financial benefits. The judge imposed the judgment against the former president in February after a lengthy bench trial.Judith N. Vale, New York’s deputy solicitor general, had barely begun addressing the court before one of the judges, David Friedman, interrupted her to cast doubt on the lawsuit. Other members of the panel inquired about possible “mission creep” by the attorney general’s office. They also questioned what “guardrails” might have ensured that Ms. James did not overstep her authority by second-guessing the net worth estimates that Mr. Trump had provided to lenders.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      F.D.I.C. Says Banks Need to Keep a Record of Their Fintech Customers

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      Banks holding customer funds for money management apps should keep track of customers’ identities and balances, the agency says.When a banking software company collapsed this spring, thousands of people keeping cash in online money management apps found themselves cut off from their own money for months. On Tuesday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation proposed new rules designed to prevent that from happening again.Customers often choose to put money they would otherwise hold in a bank checking account into an online app. Some apps offer higher interest rates on deposits than traditional banks do, while others offer customers new saving and investing plans or small loans ahead of their paydays.But money that customers send to online financial companies almost always ends up in a brick-and-mortar bank — and sometimes it is pooled into a single account. Customers often do not know which bank has their money.Banks are under no obligation to keep track of the identity of fintech customers. The federal bank regulator’s proposal would require the banks to pay more attention.Traditional banks holding funds for fintech customers would have to know each person’s identity and keep daily tabs on their balances. They would have to make sure that, no matter what happened to the other companies in the chain linking customers to their funds, the banks had a record of those funds and could share their identities and balances with regulators.This change would also help if a bank at the end of one of those long chains of software companies were to fail, the regulators said on Tuesday. At present, it is hard for the F.D.I.C. to determine whose money is covered by the $250,000 deposit insurance guarantee.Senior F.D.I.C. officials said in a briefing held for journalists on Tuesday that while they had been contemplating such rules for years, the collapse this spring of Synapse Financial Technologies, which operated banking software for online lenders, provided a good real-world example of how customers could be harmed.When Synapse filed for bankruptcy and shut down its services, it said it had only $2 million in cash on hand. But customers who had funds at the online lenders Synapse supported were collectively cut off from $300 million of their own money. The F.D.I.C. said it had received more than 1,000 customer complaints related to Synapse since May.The banks that take deposits from fintech customers are often small institutions trying to grow. Their managers could complain about having to meet new record-keeping requirements. Regulators said on Tuesday that any new requirements would apply narrowly to banks taking the kinds of deposits that could get lost in a chain of software companies.There are other methods smaller banks use to swap deposits and increase their customers’ deposit insurance coverage that would not be affected by the new proposal, the regulators said.The proposal made Tuesday was the first step toward putting the new rules in place. Regulators now want banks and other members of the public to provide feedback to help shape it. More

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      $50 Billion in Aid to Ukraine Stalls Over Legal Questions

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      U.S. and European officials are struggling to honor their pledge to use Russian assets to aid Ukraine.A long-awaited plan to help Ukraine rebuild using Russian money is in limbo as the United States and Europe struggle to agree on how to construct a $50 billion loan using Russia’s frozen central bank assets while complying with their own laws.The fraught negotiations reflect the challenges facing the Group of 7 nations as they attempt to push their sanctions powers to new limits in an attempt to punish Russia and aid Ukraine.American and European officials have been scrambling in recent weeks to try to get the loan in place by the end of the year. There is added urgency to finalize the package ahead of any potential shifts in the political landscape in the United States, where support for Ukraine could waver if former President Donald J. Trump wins the presidential election in November.But technical obstacles associated with standing up such a loan have complicated matters.Group of 7 officials grappled for months over how to use $300 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets to aid Ukraine. After European countries expressed reservations about the legality of outright seizing the assets, they agreed that it would be possible to back a $50 billion loan with the stream of interest that the assets earn.The solution was intended to provide Ukraine with a large infusion of funds without providing more direct aid from the budgets of the United States and European countries. It also allowed western allies to make use of Russia’s assets without taking the step of actually spending its money, which many top officials in Europe believed would be illegal.But differences in the legal systems in the United States and in Europe, which both plan to provide the money up front, have made it difficult to structure the loan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Fierce Lobbying, Regulators Soften Proposed Rules on Banks

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      A top Federal Reserve official said that blowback to proposed rules on capital requirements led him to “relearn the lesson of humility.”Regulators on Tuesday watered down an effort to layer new oversight on banks to protect against losses, which led to a fierce outcry from big banks and their lobbyists.The new standards, known as “Basel III endgame,” had been debated for years. They would have raised the amount of capital banks were required to maintain, funds intended to ensure stability and provide a financial cushion. Banks argued that the stricter rules would force them to crimp lending.The newly proposed rules will largely erase extra requirements on banks with between $100 billion and $250 billion in assets. It also slashes in half the capital reserve requirements on the largest, so-called systematically important lenders.Michael S. Barr, the Federal Reserve vice chair who is no favorite of the bank lobby, acknowledged the blowback in a speech laying out the changes: “Capital has costs, too,” he said in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington. In its statements pushing against the rules over the years, the banks’ main lobbying organization has said that “capital isn’t free.”“Life gives you ample opportunity to learn and relearn the lesson of humility,” Mr. Barr said.This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More

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      How Wall Street Learned About Last Week’s Labor Data Before the Public

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      The Labor Department provided insight into a recent lapse in which revised payrolls data were given out à la carte before they were online.Banks and research firms that serve hedge funds managed to confirm a closely-watched economic data last week as much as 20 minutes before the data was posted online, giving them a possible jump on financial market trading — the latest in a series of lapses at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.Now, details into what happened are beginning to emerge.A technical issue prevented the data, which showed a large downward revision to job growth in 2023 and early 2024, from publishing on the agency’s website at 10 a.m. as scheduled last Wednesday, according to details provided by the Department of Labor.In response, agency technology staff began to load the data onto the site manually. At that point, starting a bit after 10:10 a.m., other bureau staff could see the update on the website — even though it wouldn’t be visible to the public until 10:32 a.m. And bureau staff began replying to people, including Wall Street firms, who called or emailed with questions. That enabled some to get access to key data before others.It isn’t clear how many investors got early access to the data, or whether anyone actually traded on the information. The revisions ultimately did not have a huge effect on stock markets. But the fact that Wall Street funds that make money by betting on every minor move in economic data — including reports like this one — managed to access the figures before the public at large has raised serious questions about what happened.Part of the problem, according to the information provided by the department, is that the payroll revision data was not considered a “news release” like the monthly jobs data and inflation numbers. Those data are subject to strict to controls to avoid leaks. Instead, it was considered a “website release,” which has fewer guardrails.Unlike with a news release, the bureau had no backup plan to make sure there was a way to quickly push a website update out to the broader public, such as with prepared social media posts of data highlights.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Banks Hit By Global Tech Outage, With Some Trading Delayed

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      Financial transactions around the world were affected by a tech outage on Friday, hampering operations as workers at several firms struggled to log into their corporate systems.Employees at companies including JPMorgan Chase and Instinet, a brokerage firm owned by the Japanese bank Nomura, have had trouble gaining access to their work stations, according to people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.That has led to delays in some trades, though the companies have been working on workarounds, the people said.The London Stock Exchange said that its RNS corporate news service was unable to publish, citing a “third-party global technical issue” that it was investigating. The exchange operator added that the matter was not affecting securities trading and other services.Norway’s central bank said that it had suffered disruptions when conducting a securities auction on Friday, with participants having been asked to submit bids by phone or email. It later said that the system was operating normally.Other central banks, including the Bank of England and the European Central Bank, said they were not experiencing any technical issues.A representative for Nasdaq said in a statement that the exchange operator’s European and American pre-market trading businesses were working, and that its U.S. market would open for business as normal.And a representative for the New York Stock Exchange said that its market was fully operational and expected to open normally.Eshe Nelson More