The Federal Reserve's assets rose to a record $4.668 trillion as the central bank drastically stepped up its operations to add liquidity to the financial system and expanded its purchases of Treasury securities, according to its weekly balance sheet release. The central bank also said it was encouraged by the increase in usage of its discount window, where the central bank provides short-term cash loans to banks.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board should postpone the implementation of the current expected credit loss standard in light of the coronavirus pandemic, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chair Jelena McWilliams wrote in a letter to the organization. McWilliams said the organization should allow banks currently adopting CECL to have the option to postpone their implementation of the accounting standard.

The recovery of JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon from a recent heart surgery is going well, and he could be back to work as early as mid-April, a source told Reuters. The source informed the news outlet that Dimon has been involved with the company's recent decision-making in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chair Sen. Marco Rubio, R- Fla.; Senate Special Committee on Aging Chair Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine; and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Chair Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., introduced a $300 billion emergency coronavirus relief package to assist small businesses impacted by the outbreak. The proposal would seek the cooperation of banks, credit unions and other lenders that are part of the Small Business Administration's 7(a) loan program.

READ MORE: Sign up for our weekly coronavirus newsletter here, and read our latest coverage on the crisis here.

Confirming earlier reports of offering banks regulatory points for certain actions taken amid the coronavirus pandemic, federal regulators in a joint statement Thursday said lenders may receive Community Reinvestment Act consideration for helping low- and moderate-income clients, small businesses and small farms in their respective assessment areas weather the effects of the pandemic.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. employees in New York may have been infected with the novel coronavirus, Reuters reports, citing two sources. The company is the latest Wall Street giant with employees in the New York area that have been impacted by the pandemic, following reports that employees from JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo & Co. have also contracted the virus.

Bank of America Corp. announced that it is offering additional assistance to clients affected by the coronavirus outbreak. Among other things, the bank is offering refund requests for overdraft fees, non-sufficient funds fees and monthly maintenance fees for consumer and small business deposit accounts; payment deferrals and late fee refunds for consumer and small business credit cards; and similar deferrals for customers of its auto loans and mortgages and home equity products.

Cubist Systematic Strategies LLC, a standalone quantitative unit of Steve Cohen's Point72 Asset Management LP, fell 22% in March as the coronavirus pandemic and falling oil prices impacted stocks, Bloomberg News reports, citing people with knowledge of the trading group's performance.

Share value at specialty card lenders such as Synchrony Financial, Discover Financial Services and Alliance Data Systems Corp. dropped as fears of unemployment and an uptick in consumer defaults take over investors amid the spread of the coronavirus, the Financial Times reports. While senior executives at big U.S. banks informed the news outlet that they have not yet cut cardholders' credit limits, they could consider such a move if there is a sudden rise in the number of clients moving close to their borrowing limits.

Hedge funds such as Citadel Enterprise Americas LLC's global fixed-income unit, Capula Investment Management LLP, LMR Partners, Millennium Management LLC and ExodusPoint Capital Management LP have been impacted with basis trade losses last week amid market volatility, sources told The Wall Street Journal. A number of traders attributed the unwinding of basis trading to big sales of off-the-run Treasurys and other older Treasury bonds, resulting in the price of those securities to dip, according to the news outlet.

Recent market fragility has caused massive outflows of money from global asset managers, the Financial Times reports. Mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and equity funds saw billions of dollars in recent pullouts, while money market funds, which investors use as cash proxy, witnessed equally big inflow amounts. Observers fear that the redemptions could trigger dislocations as more funds deleverage and get rid of their holdings, the news outlet added.

More big U.S. banks have announced changes to their branch operations in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. To ensure branch access restrictions in line with health experts' advise, companies like Fifth Third Bancorp, KeyCorp and PNC Financial Services Group Inc. implemented drive-through-only access for simple transactions, while encouraging appointments to be made for services that require in-person interactions with bankers.

In other parts of the world

Asia-Pacific: Yes Bank to raise up to 200B rupees; Australia relaxes capital buffer rules

Europe: BoE goes all in amid pandemic; Swedbank fined; EU eases state aid rules

Middle East & Africa: South Africa, Ghana cut rates; Hapoalim profit drops; Equity Group's result up

Now featured on S&P Global Market Intelligence

Deposit funding will help LendingClub weather future market shocks: Recent market turmoil is likely to disrupt the U.S. digital lending business, but it also solidifies the thinking behind LendingClub's decision to secure more stable funding with the acquisition of Radius Bank.

Banks in the oil patch hammered again; 2 stocks down almost 70% year-to-date: Banks in states particularly exposed to the oil and gas industry have been hammered in recent weeks, and as oil dropped to less than $25 a barrel on March 18, the group was slammed again, with multiple stocks down more than 25% on the day.

Coronavirus sell-off upends US bank M&A, opens door to goodwill impairment: For deals closed in recent years, the 44% sell-off in bank stocks could lead to goodwill impairment charges in first-quarter earnings. For pending deals, the diminished valuation could send sellers or buyers searching merger agreement language for an out clause. For future deals, the billions of lost market capitalization forces potential sellers to swallow a bitter pill to make a deal.

The day ahead

Early morning futures indicators pointed to a higher opening for the U.S. market.

In Asia, the Hang Seng was up 5.05% to 22,805.07.

In Europe, around midday, the FTSE 100 was up 2.45% to 5,277.14, and the Euronext 100 was up 5.50% to 798.55.

On the macro front

The existing home sales consensus and the Baker-Hughes rig count are due out today.

Click here to read about today's financial markets, setting out the factors driving stocks, bonds and currencies around the world ahead of the New York open.

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