Deutsche Bank said on Tuesday that it now expects the Bank of England to raise interest rates by half a percentage point at its August meeting, Reuters reported. Data released earlier in the day showed a key measure of British wages rose at the joint fastest pace on record. "For now, evidence of still more persistent wage pressures will keep the MPC's foot on the accelerator," Deutsche said in a note, referring to the BoE's rate setting body. "A second consecutive 50-bp hike now looks more likely than not.
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France's central bank head Francois Villeroy de Galhau pushed back on Sunday against a suggestion from some French economists to raise the European Central Bank's (ECB) 2% inflation target, Reuters reported. Villeroy, who sits on the ECB's governing council, also said that its interest rate hikes were close to topping out and that rates would be kept at elevated levels long enough for the impact to feed through the economy. The aim is to bring inflation down to the 2% target by 2025, Villeroy said at an economics conference in the southern French city of Aix-en-Province.
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Svenska Handelsbanken AB, Sweden’s third biggest bank by market value, may see its public credit rating lowered if the fallout from the country’s property crisis continues to deepen, Bloomberg News reported. That’s the assessment of Moody’s Investors Service, which late on Friday lowered the lender’s credit rating outlook to negative from stable owing to its relatively high exposure to the real estate sector. The Stockholm-based lender has a “very significant” 29% of its loan book exposed to the real estate sector, according to Moody’s.
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Katie Price is to face questioning in court over her £3.2 million debt after she declared bankruptcy in 2019, the Daily Mail reported. The former glamour model, once estimated to be worth £45 million, previously agreed to pay £12,000 a month but has not been sticking to the deal, according to those owed the money. Ms. Price previously opened up about her bankruptcy, claiming it is related to two people in her past, according to The Mirror — insisting that her West Sussex home “Mucky Mansion” is safe.
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Former star UBS and Citigroup trader Tom Hayes, the first person jailed over the Libor rate scandal, can return to the Court of Appeal in a fresh attempt to overturn his conviction after an eight-year battle to clear his name, Reuters reported. In a landmark decision, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), an independent body that investigates potential miscarriages of justice, said on Thursday there was a "real possibility" that Hayes's conviction could be overturned. "We have concluded ...

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A pair of central bank decisions next week will shape the outlook for a wobbly global economy that the World Bank warns in a downbeat new assessment is battling stubbornly high inflation amid the pandemic’s aftermath and the war in Ukraine, the Washington Post reported. The gloomy forecast arrives days after one threat to global growth was eliminated when President Biden signed legislation Saturday to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and avert a potentially catastrophic government default.

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Norwegian Air has agreed to buy domestic peer Wideroe for 1.13 billion crowns ($106 million) as the reborn airline looks to strengthen its position in its home region, Reuters reported. The deal is the latest reshuffling in the Norwegian airline sector that saw newcomer Flyr file for bankruptcy in January having failed to raise enough cash to survive the winter season. The two companies, which have been collaborating on routes since last year, will continue to operate independently, but the networks will be more closely integrated in the future, Norwegian Air CEO Geir Karlsen said.

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“Robust demand” for space pushed the take-up rate in Dublin’s industrial and logistics property market to their second highest level for the first half of the year between January and June with construction activity reaching a record high, the Irish Times reported. In its latest report on the market, Savills Ireland said that 1.6 million sq ft of space was taken up in the first six months of the year, 620,000 sq ft in the second quarter of the year. The latter figure was in line with the five-year average, the property adviser said.

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Amid the ruins of a city ravaged by World War II, Karl Haeusgen’s grandfather invented a hydraulic pump he was so proud of that he founded a company to sell it, the New York Times reported. Back then, there were no revenue projections or five-year growth strategies. The plan was survival: “It was just about grabbing chances,” Mr. Haeusgen said. Seven decades and three generations later the family business, Hawe Hydraulics, ships some 2,500 parts around the globe. Instead of scrambling for sales, though, Mr. Haeusgen must parse the geopolitics of an ever more polarized world.

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Cineworld Group is looking at Eduardo Acuna, who runs the Americas operations of Mexico's Cinepolis, as a potential candidate to take the helm at the embattled British cinema chain operator when it emerges from bankruptcy proceedings, Sky News reported. It is not clear whether Acuna was formally in the frame to take the job or how quickly Cineworld's new owners were seeking to make an appointment, the report said.

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