Europe

Credit Suisse Group AG won the green light to pursue its court battle against companies controlled by Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, in a dispute over more than a billion dollars in debts to the bank, Bloomberg News reported. A London judge said that the Swiss lender’s attempt to wind up three of Gupta’s firms can proceed, saying the GFG companies couldn’t rely on rules designed to protect companies during the coronavirus pandemic. “The demands made on the companies over a year ago have not been met,” Judge Nicholas Briggs said in his ruling.

The European Central Bank will enter a new era on Thursday, as policymakers are set to confirm just how soon its bond-buying program will end and reaffirm plans to raise interest rates over the summer for the first time in more than a decade, the New York Times reported. Across the eurozone, inflation has outpaced economists’ expectations: The annual rate of price increases climbed to 8.1 percent in May, the highest since the creation of the euro currency in 1999.

The Russian government added 551.4 billion roubles ($9.5 billion) to its emergency reserve fund on Thursday as the Kremlin steps up its stimulus package in a bid to protect the economy from the impact of Western sanctions and its actions in Ukraine, Reuters reported. "The funds will be used in part to implement measures aimed at ensuring the stability of economic development in the conditions of external constraints," the government said in a statement announcing the cash injection.

Labour strife and staffing shortages have European airports clamouring to find more workers, minimize cancelled flights and reduce headaches for travellers during the busy summer season, Reuters reported. Workers at France's Charles De Gaulle airport are set to strike on Thursday for more pay, with a quarter of flights cancelled. In Italy, crews from budget carriers Ryanair, easyJet and Volotea walked off the job on Wednesday. Ryanair cabin crew could strike in Europe this summer, after talks ended with two Spanish unions, according to a statement by unions SITCPLA and USO.

We.trade, one of the earliest blochcain coalitions for trade finance is entering insolvency after its banking shareholders pulled the plug, Finextra.com reported. The company was formed in 2017 as a consortium that eventually included a dozen major banks such as Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Santander, Societe Generale and UBS. Yesterday the Irish Independent reported that the company is winding down its operations and has has proposed appointing PwC as a liquidator.

The U.S. Treasury moved to block U.S. investors from making purchases of Russian debt in secondary markets, an apparent expansion from existing policy that only prohibited purchases of newly issued Russian government debt and some Russian corporate debts, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. In new guidance, the Treasury Department said U.S.

The Financial Reporting Council fined PricewaterhouseCoopers on Tuesday after the U.K. audit and accounting regulator found issues with the firm’s audits of two construction groups, the Wall Street Journal reported. The FRC said it imposed sanctions of roughly £5 million—equivalent to about $6.3 million—for failings in PwC’s audits of Galliford Try Holdings PLC and Kier Group PLC, which have market caps of around £191 million and £345 million, respectively. PwC in a statement expressed regret that certain audits weren’t up to standards and said it has worked to improve audit quality.

Relocating euro clearing from London to the European Union must be "market-led" rather than mandatory, with the shift already well underway, the head of Eurex Clearing said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. After Brexit, the European Union has said it will not allow EU market participants to clear euro derivatives in London after June 2025, citing a need to end its heavy reliance on that market in the same way the bloc is cutting dependency on Russian energy.

Britain will begin live testing of crypto blockchain technology for traditional market activities such as trading and settlement of stocks and bonds next year as part of a drive to become a global "crypto hub", the finance ministry said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Gwyneth Nurse, the ministry's director general for financial services, said the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT), which underpins cryptoassets, is a key priority for making financial market infrastructure more innovative and efficient for users.

Bondholders are in for a tangled mess of financial, political and legal wrangling if sanctions push Russia to a historic default, Bloomberg News reported. So far, Moscow has been able to navigate the restrictions to service its international debt, but that’s likely to change after the US closed another avenue to creditors, affecting about $100 million in payments due on May 27. The European Union has also sanctioned Russia’s central depository, which said it would suspend euro-denominated transactions.