February 9 China Eases Property Loan Curbs as Housing Market Slumps China eased a year-long cap on loans for the real estate sector to fund public rental housing, the latest bid by authorities to tackle a slumping property market, Bloomberg News reported. Bank loans to fund low-cost rental projects will no longer be subject to regulatory curbs, the People’s Bank of China said in a statement on Tuesday. The rules required banks to trim their loan exposure to the property sector to a certain level.

Ukraine is betting that foreign aid and improved tax collection during an economic rebound will help it weather the financial tensions resulting from warnings by the U.S. and its allies of a potential Russian invasion, Bloomberg News reported. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the U.S. and western media are undermining Ukraine’s economy by spreading “information panic” about the risk of a Russian attack. The government in Kyiv insists the more than 100,000 Russian troops massed at the borders aren’t enough for a full-scale invasion -- and the Kremlin denies any such plans.

The European Union is successfully stepping up the fight to fend off risky foreign business takeovers from nations like China that could endanger national security or threaten control over essential sectors like energy, transport and health care, the Associated Press reported. The unprecedented legislation creating a new area of coordination in the 27-nation EU makes the bloc much better equipped to protect strategic homegrown businesses, a top French official said.

Rapid action is needed to update how cross-border financial services are scrutinised and consumers protected as the sector becomes digitalised with "Big Tech" playing an increased role, European Union regulators said on Monday, Reuters reported. People are turning to social media and using smartphones to buy and sell shares, move money around bank accounts and make payments, a trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving regulators playing catch-up.

KPMG has been sued for 1.3 billion pounds ($1.77 billion) by the liquidators of Carillion for missing "red flags" during audits of the construction giant, in one of the largest claims against one of the world's top accountants, Reuters reported. Britain's Official Receiver, part of the Insolvency Service, which is liquidating the former blue-chip group, alleged that negligent failures by KPMG to detect misstatements in the accounts of Carillion - which collapsed in 2018 under 7 billion pounds of debt - cost claimants "extensive loss and damage".

Prices are rising steeply in the United States and across Europe, driven by rising energy costs and supply-chain issues triggered by the easing of pandemic rules. But in Britain, there is a fear that sharply escalating heat and electricity bills, combined with food inflation, will push millions more into poverty, the New York Times reported. The Bank of England lifted interest rates on Thursday for the second time in two months — moving before the Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank.

Bondholders of fertilizer producer CF Industries Holdings Inc. agreed to amend the company’s debt covenants, clearing a path for it to restructure its troubled U.K. operations, Bloomberg News reported. Bondholders agreed to let CF Industries remove its U.K. units from the definition of a “substantial subsidiary” in exchange for a $2 fee per $1,000 of principal on four different outstanding bond issues, the company said in a regulatory filing Tuesday. In a previous filing, the Deerfield, Illinois-based manufacturer said it sought to change the definition so that restructuring its U.K.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a raft of measures as the U.K. government sought to get a grip on a burgeoning cost-of-living crisis, with millions of Britons facing record increases in their energy bills, Bloomberg News reported. “The government is going to step in to directly help people manage those extra costs,” Sunak said in the House of Commons on Thursday, saying his intervention was worth 9 billion pounds ($12 billion).

The Bank of England raised interest rates to 0.5% on Thursday and nearly half of its policymakers wanted a bigger increase to contain rampant price pressures, as the central bank warned inflation will soon top 7%, Reuters reported. In a surprise split decision, four of the nine members of the Monetary Policy Committee wanted to raise interest rates by half a percentage point to 0.75%. This would have been the biggest increase in borrowing costs since the BoE became operationally independent 25 years ago.

The European Central Bank kept policy unchanged as expected on Thursday, curbing stimulus over the coming months but maintaining plenty of support for the economy even after inflation unexpectedly hit a fresh record high, Reuters reported. After the ECB extended support measures only in December, policy change was not expected to be on the agenda. But stubbornly high inflation - which rose to 5.1% last month in the 19-country euro zone - is complicating life for the bank and ECB President Christine Lagarde will be under pressure to address the issue in her 1330 GMT news conference.