(Reuters) – U.S. banks should be preserving as much capital as they possibly can amid the coronavirus outbreak and should perhaps decide against dividend payments, Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Raphael Bostic said on Thursday.
“I would hope that many of them (banks) decide that it’s (dividend) not exactly the best thing at this time,” Bostic said in an interview with CNBC.
He also reiterated that he was “not a big fan” of negative interest rates. Last week, he had described negative rates as “among the weaker tools in the toolkit.”
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru)