Headlines

LATAM Airlines Group, the region’s largest carrier, said on Wednesday that it had sought to extend until September the deadline to present its restructuring plan as part of the bankruptcy protection process initiated in 2020, Reuters reported. LATAM filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. in May of last year, hammered by the world travel crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, it was the world’s largest airline to take such action due to COVID-19.

Egyptian urban prices accelerated at their fastest pace since December, raising the chances of the central bank retaining one of the world’s highest real interest rates next week, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices in urban parts of the North African nation grew an annual 4.8% in May, compared with 4.1% in April, the state-run statistics agency CAPMAS said Thursday. Prices increased 0.7% month-on-month.

China's new bank loans unexpectedly rose in May from the previous month but broader credit growth continued to slow, as the central bank seeks to contain rising debt in the world's second-largest economy, Reuters reported. Top Chinese leaders have repeatedly vowed to avoid any sharp policy turns, keeping borrowing costs low and telling banks to maintain support for small firms, while being more watchful about extending credit to hot areas of the economy such as property.

Authorities in China escalated their campaign against cryptocurrencies, arresting more than 1,100 people suspected of using the digital assets to launder ill-gotten funds and ordering mines to shut down in one of its western provinces, the Wall Street Journal reported. In a swoop spanning 23 provinces, regions and cities, Chinese police on Wednesday rounded up more than 170 criminal groups that engaged in cryptocurrency trading in order to launder money obtained via telephone and online scams, the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement.

The Bank of Canada said on Thursday that inflation could remain higher than projected if supply imbalances and pressures on capacity persist, which might lead it to reduce stimulus more quickly than currently expected, Reuters reported. When asked during a news conference if above-target inflation could be a sign there is less slack in the economy than the central bank is projecting, Deputy Governor Tim Lane said it was a “certainly a possibility.” Inflation hit 3.4% in April, its fastest pace in a decade, mostly due to base-year effects and high commodity prices.

El Salvador passed a new law on Wednesday that would make the small Central American country the world’s first to deem bitcoin legal tender, a move that analysts say risks putting its economy at the mercy of the digital currency’s sharp swings, the Wall Street Journal reported. The designation allows bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value, to be used to buy goods and pay taxes and bank loans. Businesses would be required to accept bitcoin for payment, with the bitcoin-dollar exchange rate set by the market.

Brazilian metropolitan rail company Supervia filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, the company said, as traffic was sharply hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. The company, controlled by a Japanese group that includes a subsidiary of Mitsui & Co 8031.T and West Japan Railway Co 9021.T, will restructure 1.2 billion reais ($237.4 million) in debt. Before the pandemic, Supervia, which operates in Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, had around 600,000 passengers a day but now the number has dropped to 300,000.

The liquidator of a Kildare company linked to a Germany property group which collapsed, resulting in losses of up to €107 million for Irish investors, has criticised delays he is experiencing in getting key information as he investigates the firm’s affairs before it was put into wind-up, the Irish Times reported. Hanover-based German Property Group (GPG), formerly known as Dolphin Trust, collapsed last year after taking €1.5 billion from investors in the Republic, the UK, Asia and elsewhere since it was set up by businessman Charles Smethurst in 2008.

The European Central Bank is expected to leave its stimulus efforts running at full steam Thursday — even as the economy shows signs of recovery thanks to the easing of pandemic restrictions, the Associated Press reported. And that could present a challenge for ECB head Christine Lagarde. She faces a balancing act: acknowledging improving economic data without triggering a premature market reaction that anticipates the eventual reduction in central bank support for the economy.

Greece will get nearly twice as much funding than originally expected this year from the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, one of the country’s top economic advisers said on Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported. The country will receive some 7.5 billion euros ($9.1 billion) in 2021 from the fund, set up to help offset the economic effects of the pandemic, compared with an original figure of around 4 billion euros, Alex Patelis, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s chief economic adviser, said at the Athens Stock Exchange’s annual investment forum.