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Market Outlook: Bank of Korea’s turn to cut

First, and surprising move, since 2016
July 18, 2019

Today the Bank of Korea, South Korea’s central bank, trimmed its key interest rate by 25 basis points to 1.5 per cent. Governor Lee Ju-yeol said ‘’economic circumstances have deteriorated since April. With the rate cut, we took into account the effects of Japan’s trade restrictions’’, reducing forecast growth to 2.2 per cent, lower than the government’s own 2.4 per cent forecast. The first three months of this year saw the country’s worst economic contraction since the global financial crisis.

 

At a public meeting in Moorgate yesterday Andrew Bailey, head of the Financial Conduct Authority, was heckled, told to ‘stop protecting the crooks’, and to ‘run away, slimy’. This was at the end of a crowded meeting with investors who had lost money or suffered with cases the FCA should be overseeing, like Mr Woodford’s fund, RBS’s Global Restructuring Group, and London Capital & Finance. Let’s not forget that the FCA was created out of the discredited FSA, chaired by Lord Turner and run by CEO Hector Sants until it was wound up by the government in 2012.

DAX 30

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