Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan Sunday thanked the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for timely providing financial assistance to Pakistan back in 2018 when PTI took over the ailing economy, Daily Pakistan reported. Addressing Pakistani community at a ceremony in connection with Roshan Digital Account, the premier said that Pakistan could have defaulted on international debt payments if Saudi Arabia had not extended the helping hand in that tough times. Back in October 2020, the Kingdom had announced a $6 billion bailout package for Pakistan’s shaky economy.
Resources Per Country
- Afghanistan
- Armenia
- Australia
- Azerbaijan
- Bangladesh
- Bhutan
- Brunei
- Cambodia
- China
- Cook Islands
- Cyprus
- Fiji
- Georgia
- Hong Kong
- India
- Indonesia
- Japan
- Kazakhstan
- Kyrgyzstan
- Laos
- Macau
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Micronesia
- Mongolia
- Myanmar
- Nepal
- New Zealand
- North Korea
- Pakistan
- Papua New Guinea
- Philippines
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Sri Lanka
- Taiwan
- Tajikistan
- Thailand
- Turkey
- Turkmenistan
- Uzbekistan
- Vanuatu
- Vietnam
Read more
India’s airlines are under renewed pressure to raise cash or face the risk of having to downsize, consolidate or have their planes repossessed by lessors as a surge of COVID-19 infections roils travel, Reuters reported. Passenger traffic fell by nearly 30% in April from a month before and has halved again so far in May, forcing even the country's biggest and most cashed-up carrier, IndiGo, to act.
Read more
Turkey’s central bank kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged for a second meeting on Thursday, pledging to maintain its “current” policy stance until there’s a significant drop in inflation, Bloomberg News reported. The Monetary Policy Committee left its key rate at 19% as forecast by all analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Inflation accelerated for a seventh month in April to 17.1%, spurred on by a weak lira and rising global energy prices. But new bank Governor Sahap Kavcioglu predicted the pace of price gains had peaked and would now start dropping to 12.2% by the end of 2021.
Read more
For decades, France’s Valdunes SAS charged premium prices for the wheels it made for high-speed trains and other rail systems around the world. That strategy changed after a Chinese state-owned industrial conglomerate bought the company in 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported. The new owner, Maanshan Iron & Steel Co. , or MA Steel, slashed prices in a bid to dominate the market. “We were told that we shouldn’t miss a single order. That was explicit,” recalled Jérôme Duchange, Valdunes’s former top executive in France.
Read more
Liberty Steel Group said on Wednesday that it had appointed a committee to restructure and refinance the group after Greensill Capital, its biggest lender, filed for insolvency in March, Reuters reported. The move comes after Sanjeev Gupta’s family conglomerate GFG Alliance announced that its Australian unit had agreed terms to refinance its exposure to Greensill. Liberty Steel, which is also under the GFG umbrella, said in a statement that four new board directors would form a Restructuring and Transformation Committee (RTC) to focus on fixing or selling underperforming units.
Read more
The European Union unveiled draft rules on Wednesday aimed at cracking down on state-subsidized foreign companies in Europe, a move that could allow regulators to pursue big Chinese companies in much the same way they have targeted U.S. multinationals such as Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported. The legislation is the latest sign of Europe’s shifting stance toward China, the bloc’s biggest trading partner for goods and a crucial market for its exporters.
Read more
Drugmaker Mundipharma International Ltd，owned by the billionaire American Sackler family, has kicked off the sale of its China unit in a deal that could fetch more than $1 billion, Reuters reported. Mundipharma has invited a select group of potential buyers, including private equity firms and local and international pharmaceutical companies, to bid for the asset. Initial bids are due by the end of May. Mundipharma hired Deutsche Bank last year to explore a sale of itself and some individual businesses. It decided to run a standalone sale process for its China business earlier this year.
Read more
Australia's corporate watchdog accused Westpac Banking Corp. of insider trading while financing a A$16 billion ($12 billion) energy grid privatisation in 2016, the latest in a series of regulatory problems for the country's No. 2 lender, Reuters reported. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said Westpac knew it had won the contract to help two pension funds buy Ausgrid, a state-owned power supplier to millions of people around Sydney, for two hours while it bought A$12 billion of derivative products to support the deal.
Read more
China’s antitrust watchdog is beefing up its senior ranks as authorities step up efforts to rein in the country’s powerful technology companies, the Wall Street Journal reported. Dong Hongxia will take on a new role as a third deputy director-general of the Antimonopoly Bureau, part of the powerful State Administration for Market Regulation. Ms. Dong, currently director of a division responsible for reviewing mergers, is an expert on antitrust issues and a frequent speaker at seminars and events.
Read more
Australian insolvency and restructuring experts say that reforms announced on Monday designed to help struggling companies at risk of collapse would benefit from adopting US-style bankruptcy options, the Australian Financial Review reported. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced steps to overhaul insolvency laws, including a strengthening of schemes of arrangement to better support the so-called debtor-in-possession model for large companies.