The European Central Bank will remain “extremely vigilant” of expectations for consumer prices to ensure they don’t surpass its medium-term goal, Governing Council member Pablo Hernandez de Cos said, Bloomberg News reported. “We’ll also have to watch out for a possible de-anchoring of medium- and long-term inflation expectations above 2%,” de Cos said Monday.
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Monte dei Paschi di Siena faces a tight schedule to secure cornerstone shareholders for a share sale of up to 2.5 billion euros ($2.4 billion) after an election pause during which investors were non-committal ended on Monday, Reuters reported. After leading the conservative alliance to victory in Sunday's vote, Giorgia Meloni looks set to become Italy's first woman prime minister at the head of its most right-wing government since World War Two. Maurizio Leo, a senior economic adviser to the Brothers of Italy leader Meloni, said MPS was in good hands.
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Bucharest Airports Company (CNAB), the company operating Romania's largest airport Henri Coanda, said it is considering the option of suspending the provision of services to national flag carrier Tarom and taking legal steps, including, if necessary, an insolvency request, Romania-Insider.com reported. Tarom claims there is no risk of disrupting the company's operations at Henri Coanda Airport, according to News.ro.
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Germany is drawing up plans to cap the price of electricity and gas that could be rolled out in the coming weeks, according to government officials, the Wall Street Journal reported. The caps would be aimed at shielding consumers and businesses from further increases in energy prices triggered by the economic war between Russia and the West over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. German officials said Berlin would move ahead with an electricity-price cap if the European Union failed to agree on such a mechanism for the entire bloc.
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Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said on Monday that the BoE "will not hesitate" to raise interest rates if needed to meet its 2% inflation target, and that it was watching financial markets "very closely" following sharp moves in asset prices, Reuters reported. Sterling fell to a record low against the U.S. dollar earlier on Monday in Asian trading, extending losses that had accelerated on Friday after finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng gave his first fiscal statement, promising big tax cuts.
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Europe’s industrial giants have fretted for months that gas shortages this winter will cripple production. But even with fuel available, companies are discovering they can’t afford it, Bloomberg News reported. “It’s not about shutdowns. It’s pricing, it’s cost,” said Christian Levin, chief executive officer of Traton SE, the truckmaking unit of Volkswagen AG. Europe is paying seven times as much for gas as the US, underscoring a dramatic erosion of the continent’s industrial competitiveness that threatens to cause lasting damage to its economy.
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Russia's National Settlement Depository has demanded that the European Union recognise sanctions imposed on it as illegal and pay for any legal costs incurred, a filing on the EU's Official Journal dated on Monday showed, Reuters reported. Owned by Moscow Exchange, the NSD, Russia's domestic paying agent, is equivalent to the Euroclear and Clearstream clearing houses, and plays an important role in the country's financial system as a key intermediary with international markets.
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Britain's new finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng unleashed historic tax cuts and huge increases in borrowing on Friday in an economic agenda that floored financial markets, sending sterling and British government bonds into freefall, Reuters reported. Kwarteng scrapped the country's top rate of income tax, cancelled a planned rise in corporate taxes and for the first time put a price tag on the spending plans of Prime Minister Liz Truss, who wants to double Britain's rate of economic growth.
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A U.K. businessman is under investigation after claiming more than £500,000 in Bounce Back loans for 12 firms that later went bust, the Mirror reported. Sukhwant Singh Pahal used the Government scheme – set up to help small businesses survive the pandemic – to claim up to £50,000 per company. One of his firms, Beans Housing Ltd, also received £1.1million from Birmingham City Council in 2017 to accommodate the homeless. All 12 of Mr Pahal’s firms applied for voluntary liquidation in 2021 on insolvency grounds.
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Russia's banks have lost an estimated 1.5 trillion roubles ($25.5 billion) as a result of the fallout from the conflict in Ukraine, a central bank official said on Friday, Reuters reported. Maxim Lyubomudrov, who heads the regulator's department that supervises the country's largest banks, said this was an "acceptable" level of losses and that the government had plans in place to support Russia's lenders through the crisis. Read more.
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