2025-09-16 19:41

WASHINGTON, Sept 16 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to appoint an emergency board to conduct mediation to avert a work stoppage at the Long Island Rail Road, which serves nearly 300,000 passengers daily. On Monday, a group of five unions said they had asked Trump to intervene. Previously, the unions had threatened to launch a strike this week at the railroad serving New York commuters. Sign up here. A White House spokesperson said Trump had acted at the unions' request "to bring both sides back to the negotiating table and prevent a strike that could have crippled the New York City area and disrupted the upcoming Ryder Cup on Long Island." Union leaders said the appointment of a White House board would trigger a 120-day period during which the board would make a recommendation, and no work stoppage could occur in that time. If no deal is reached, the White House could then name a second board with a cooling-off period until May 2026. The White House noted the three-member National Mediation Board - with two Democrats and a Republican -- voted to release the MTA and LIRR worker unions from negotiations in August, opening the door to a potential strike. "This action does not mean a strike won't happen. But it does mean it won't happen now," said Gil Lang, general chairman for the BLET's LIRR engineers. The LIRR is one of the largest commuter railroads in the U.S. On Monday, New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority criticized the unions. "If these unions wanted to put riders first, they would either settle or agree to binding arbitration... This cynical delay serves no one." New York Governor Kathy Hochul said both sides must get back to talks. "There is a fair offer on the table, and I have directed the MTA to be ready to negotiate anytime, anywhere," she said. "Both sides must return to negotiations and keep working around the clock until this is resolved." https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sustainable-finance-reporting/trump-appointing-board-mediate-new-york-rail-labor-dispute-2025-09-16/

2025-09-16 19:36

Trump backs move to half-yearly reporting from quarterly Would align with the EU, Britain, Australia, New Zealand Could help boards do more on sustainability, investors say LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) - A call by Donald Trump to ditch quarterly corporate reporting , opens new tab has received cautious support from an unlikely source: international investors pushing business to do more on longer-term sustainability issues, many lambasted by the U.S. president. Trump on Monday called for companies to shift to six-monthly updates, adding his voice to those of business heavyweights including Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa.N) , opens new tab Chair Warren Buffett and JPMorgan (JPM.N) , opens new tab CEO Jamie Dimon, who have argued in the past that short-termism harms the economy. Sign up here. Abandoning quarterly reporting would see the world's biggest economy and the deepest capital market join a global shift away from the practice and could help those investors pushing boards to do more on issues such as climate change that are set to increasingly impact corporate value. "Responsible investment people have never been advocates of quarterly reporting, since it tends to encourage a greater focus on trading and less on good ownership," said David Pitt-Watson, corporate governance expert and Fellow at Cambridge University's Judge Business School. Sustainability issues have been under attack by Trump since he began his second term earlier this year, though, including through a move to nix a rule that would have pushed companies to disclose climate-related data. For many investors in Europe and elsewhere, that data is exactly what they want to see. "We want companies to consider the material impact of their strategies on a long-term view and plan accordingly to mitigate any sustainability-related risks, so if moving away from quarterly reporting can help achieve this without impacting transparency and disclosure then it could be positive," said Nick Duncan, Sustainable Investment director at investor Aberdeen, which manages more than 500 billion pounds ($682 billion). "Especially if the reduced quarterly reporting burden encouraged companies to maintain or enhance the current level of sustainability-related reporting." That aside, the move had a clear win in that it would reduce the amount of time companies spend in 'closed period' ahead of results - typically a month - during which investors are not allowed to speak with them, he added. Changing the securities law that stretches back decades would mark a sea-change for the world's biggest capital market, where more than 4,000 companies with a combined market capitalisation of more than $60 trillion trade publicly. Overseas investors have long been used to dealing with six-monthly updates from companies in many European Union countries, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. Other than the U.S., China is the biggest equity market still requiring it by law although local stock markets in countries such as Japan and Germany still demand it as a condition of listing, or listing on the premium market. For investors in Britain - which made the move to interims more than a decade ago, alongside the EU - it had helped bolster sustainability efforts, said Andrew Ninian, director of Stewardship, Risk and Tax at The Investment Association, the UK trade body for the investment industry. "Moving away from mandatory quarterly reporting has given companies greater flexibility to focus on long-term investment decisions, strategy and reporting rather than management of short-term targets." Despite that, some investors cautioned action would be needed to shore up investor protections. "Although semi-annual reporting works in some countries, such as the UK and Australia, there are structural differences that make the U.S. context more challenging," said Hayley Grafton, Senior Sustainable Investment analyst at UK investor Edentree Investment Management. Examples of potential gaps include around profit warnings. In Britain, they are treated as regulatory disclosures while in the U.S., they are not a regulatory requirement and updates can be withheld, she said. And unlike in Australia, where companies must provide continuous disclosure of material information and are expected to issue trading updates where performance diverges from guidance, the U.S. has no equivalent to this outside earnings guidance. Despite the need for safeguards, which Grafton said also included monitoring of the impact on transparency and the cost of capital, Pitt-Watson said the move could help sustainability investors. "As Trump says, the former has knock-on effects distracting management. So a move to half-yearly reporting might support long-term, value-adding management. I think many of us think that is a good thing." ($1 = 0.7324 pounds) https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/trumps-call-end-quarterly-reports-gets-unlikely-support-climate-conscious-2025-09-16/

2025-09-16 18:23

Dollar slips 0.9% vs euro, weakest since September 2021 Focus on Fed rate decision on Wednesday BoE to announce rate decision on Thursday, Bank of Japan on Friday NEW YORK, Sept 16 (Reuters) - The dollar fell across the board on Tuesday, hitting a four-year low against the euro, as investors firmed bets for a Federal Reserve interest rate cut this week. The euro rose by 0.9% higher to $1.1867, its highest level since September 2021. The U.S. dollar index , which tracks the dollar against a basket of six major currencies, was 0.7% lower at 96.636, its lowest since July 1. Sign up here. The dollar, which had steadied in recent months following a significant drop earlier in the year, has come under renewed selling pressure as expectations have risen for the Fed to resume cutting interest rates and as U.S. President Donald Trump renewed calls , opens new tab for aggressive monetary easing. Markets expect a 25-basis-point rate cut on Wednesday, with rapidly softening labor market data the key driver of the ramp-up in easing bets in recent weeks. "The dollar is trading with a heavy tone across the board as investors brace for a dovish message in Wednesday’s voting record, ‘dot plot’ summary of economic projections, and press conference," said Karl Schamotta, chief market strategist at Corpay. Fed Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to hold a press conference following the 2 p.m. release of the Fed's policy statement on Wednesday. "Jerome Powell & Co are seen downplaying inflation risks and expressing a clear bias toward supporting labor markets —something that could help set the stage for a sequential set of cuts in the months ahead — and traders are positioning for asymmetric moves across most major currency pairs," Schamotta said. The dollar got little relief from data on Monday that showed U.S. retail sales increased more than expected in August. Investors remain concerned about U.S. economic growth amid labor market weakness and rising goods prices because of tariffs on imports. "Another set of robust U.S. activity data suggest that the U.S. economy remains in decent shape despite the recent slowdown in employment growth," Jonas Goltermann, deputy chief markets economist at Capital Economics, said in a note. "This suggests to us that the FOMC will stick to a more gradual pace of policy easing than currently discounted and that Treasury yields and the dollar are likely to stage a bit of a rebound from here." Sterling was 0.5% higher at $1.366, a more than two-month high, after data showed on Tuesday that Britain's jobs market has lost a little more steam, potentially easing worries at the Bank of England about persistent inflation pressures. The Office for National Statistics figures showed the number of workers on companies' payrolls falling for a seventh month in a row, while basic wage growth in the private sector - watched closely by the BoE - slowed to 4.7% between May and July from 4.8% in the three months to June. The BoE is expected to keep interest rates on hold this week, after cutting in August. The euro found support Tuesday from data that showed euro zone industrial production inched higher in July, confirming views that the sector is holding up despite trade tensions, even if its rate of expansion is anemic. German investor morale unexpectedly rose in September, the ZEW research institute said on Tuesday, in a sign of cautious optimism. Against the yen, the dollar slipped to a one-month low and was last trading down 0.7% to 146.35, ahead of the Bank of Japan policy meeting on Friday, with money markets expecting the central bank to keep rates at 0.5% . Japan's farm minister and the chief government spokesperson joined the race on Tuesday to lead the ruling party and replace outgoing Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who announced his resignation last month. Cryptocurrency bitcoin rose 1% to $116,511, snapping a three-session losing streak. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/dollar-falls-four-year-low-vs-euro-with-fed-rate-decision-tap-2025-09-16/

2025-09-16 16:37

Sept 16 (Reuters) - U.S. bond firm PIMCO said on Tuesday the Federal Reserve should consider a halt to the shrinking of its mortgage holdings in order to boost the U.S. housing market. Since 2022 when it began its rate-hiking campaign, the Fed has shed the mortgage bond holdings on its balance sheet through quantitative tightening, where the central bank allows the principal and interest payments on mortgage-backed securities to roll off without reinvesting those proceeds. Sign up here. Mortgage spreads, or the gap between Treasury yields and mortgage rates, have remained "unusually wide" as the Fed has maintained its mortgage shedding over the past three years, according to PIMCO's Tuesday report , opens new tab. Those spreads stood "near historically wide levels" at roughly 230 basis points as of Friday, according to PIMCO. This in turn has contributed to a high 6.35% average rate on the 30-year mortgage, which is the most common house loan taken out by Americans. Reinvesting the proceeds of principal and interest payments by mortgage borrowers behind MBS on its balance sheet could do as much, if not more, than rate cuts to lower mortgage rates, wrote Marc Seidner, chief investment officer of non-traditional strategies, and Pramol Dhawan, portfolio manager at PIMCO. "In a cycle where interest rate policy is politically fraught and inflation remains sticky, the Fed may find that the most effective easing tool is already hiding in plain sight," they wrote. One option suggested by Seidner and Dhawan would be to reinvest the current MBS roll-off, which averages roughly $18 billion each month. They estimate that could reduce mortgage rates by 20 to 30 basis points. "It could deliver as much bang for the buck as a 100-bp cut to the federal funds rate, which is what has historically been needed to achieve a similar drop in mortgage rates," they wrote. Another option would be to both reinvest the current MBS roll-off and sell between $20 billion to $30 billion in their MBS to reinvest in current securities. This could lead to a 40 to 50 bps reduction in mortgage rates, Seidner and Dhawan wrote. Either of these could prove a more effective option to lower mortgage rates than the widely-anticipated rate cuts at the Fed's coming meetings, they noted. "If the Fed continues its current approach, expect mortgage rates to remain elevated through 2026, making homeownership a luxury good reserved for the wealthy," they said. https://www.reuters.com/business/pimco-recommends-fed-halt-mortgage-unwind-boost-housing-market-2025-09-16/

2025-09-16 16:09

Sept 16 (Reuters) - Three Swiss banks, including UBS (UBSG.S) , opens new tab, have carried out a binding payment using bank deposits and a public blockchain for the first time, the Swiss Bankers Association said on Tuesday. The payment was carried out as part of a feasibility study on use of deposit tokens by PostFinance, Sygnum Bank and UBS. Sign up here. "This is something really new," said Thomas Frei, head of product innovation at Sygnum Bank. Deposit tokens refer to bank deposits that have been made usable on the blockchain by "tokenizing" them. During the study clients sent tokens on the blockchain that represented bank deposits, settling their respective transactions. "Our tokenized deposits can be used across different banks, which is something that was not there yet," Frei said. He said the study showed the banks could cover their counterparty risk. Frei added that while JPMorgan had tokenized deposits too, they could only be used within JPMorgan. "Basically, what we did is we launched a kind of new form of payments on the blockchain, which is an alternative to stablecoins," Frei said. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose value is pegged to that of another currency, commodity, or financial instrument. In future, payments could not only be processed immediately and definitively on shared infrastructure but also be integrated directly into automated business processes, the SBA said. More work still needs to be done before the banks would be ready to roll the product out, Frei said. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/swiss-banks-claim-first-binding-payment-using-public-blockchain-2025-09-16/

2025-09-16 13:42

BRASILIA, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said on Tuesday he expects interest rate cuts to begin in the coming months, citing a more favorable foreign exchange outlook in Latin America's largest economy. "I believe there will be room for rate cuts ... in the coming months," Haddad told an event hosted by J. Safra Bank. Sign up here. He noted that at the start of the year he said he would not pay more than 5.70 reais per dollar, while the exchange rate now stands near 5.30. Although that level hurts government tax collection, he stressed it also brings "good news". "We can look ahead with more optimism about a balance between interest rates and the exchange rate," he added. Brazil's central bank will announce its next policy decision on Wednesday, after halting a tightening cycle in July that had lifted the benchmark Selic rate by 450 basis points to 15%, its highest in nearly two decades. A weekly central bank survey of more than 100 economists shows expectations that rates will hold steady through December, after policymakers signaled plans to keep borrowing costs unchanged to curb inflation, which has long exceeded the 3% target. Haddad added that leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will conclude his four-year term in 2026 with the lowest accumulated inflation ever recorded, projected for the first time to come in below 20%. According to the minister, the average economic growth during Lula's term will be close to 3% per year, with unemployment at historic lows. He argued that these factors put Brazil in a stronger fiscal position than the one inherited from the previous government. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazils-finance-minister-sees-rate-cuts-coming-months-2025-09-16/