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Troubled state finance company China Huarong Asset Management on Thursday successfully completed its biggest bond redemption since default worries erupted in April, but investors remain concerned about its long-term health and that of its peers, Nikkei Asia reported. The company, originally set up to manage soured loans extended by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, repaid a $900 million bond right on time. Huarong over the weekend also repaid a 500 million yuan ($78.3 million) domestic bond, according to Bloomberg.
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Finance ministers from the main industrialised countries are set to discuss a deal on the reform of the global corporate tax system , including a minimum tax rate for multinationals, at a G7 meeting in London this weekend, the Irish Times reported. The ministers look certain to signal support for a deal and reports on Thursday evening pointed to efforts to achieve a breakthrough on key details, including a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15 per cent, above the Republic’s 12.5 per cent rate.
Authorities in Sri Lanka were trying to head off a potential environmental disaster Thursday as a fire-damaged container ship that had been carrying chemicals was sinking off of the country’s main port, the Associated Press reported. The Singapore-flagged MV X-Press Pearl started sinking on Wednesday, a day after authorities extinguished a fire that raged on the vessel for 12 days. Efforts to tow the ship into deeper waters away from the port in Colombo failed after the ship’s stern became submerged and rested on the seabed.
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Invesco Ltd. and Searchlight Capital Partners LP are lobbying creditors of Mediapro to back a restructuring deal enabling them to take a stake in the producer of top-flight Spanish soccer broadcasts left reeling by the pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. The investment firms sent a restructuring proposal to lenders to Mediapro including Cairn Capital Ltd. and Carlyle Group, on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the matter.
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Global employment will take years to return to prepandemic levels, the United Nations’ labor organization said on Wednesday in a report that urged governments to build social protection systems to avoid the destabilizing effects of deepening economic and social inequality, the New York Times reported. The pandemic wiped out around 144 million jobs last year, including a projected 30 million new jobs that would have been created, the International Labor Organization said in its assessment of employment and social trends.
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Lebanon scrapped a new dollar-deposit rule on Thursday that triggered minor street protests and meant savers lost the ability to change their money at a more favorable rate, Bloomberg News reported. A day after the Shura Council, the country’s top judicial body, banned a long-standing rule allowing depositors to access their dollars at a rate higher than the official currency peg, Riad Salameh, the governor of Banque du Liban, said the decision was being revoked. The rule “is still in effect,” Salameh told reporters in Beirut after meeting with the president and the head of the council.
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Amigo has fuelled fears among investors that it will fall into insolvency by saying it will not challenge a High Court decision to block its plan to cut compensation payments to customers who were mis-sold loans, the London Times reported. Shares in the guarantor lender fell by as much as 15.6 per cent yesterday after it said that it had decided against pursuing an appeal against last week’s judgment from Mr Justice Miles.
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European Union government and parliament negotiators reached a deal on Tuesday on rules that will force large multinational companies to disclose how much revenue and tax they pay in the 27-nation bloc and how much in countries considered tax havens by the EU, Reuters reported. The new law, proposed by the European Commission in 2016, is part of the EU's efforts to fight tax avoidance by large international companies at a time when the EU badly needs cash to finance an economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Lebanon’s severe economic and financial crisis is likely to rank as one of the worst the world has seen in more than 150 years, the World Bank said in a report released Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. The World Bank said that since late 2019, Lebanon has been facing compounded challenges, including its largest peace-time economic and financial crisis, the spread of coronavirus and a massive blast at Beirut’s port last year that is considered as one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.
The OPEC oil cartel and allied producing countries plan to restore 2.1 million barrels per day of crude production, balancing fears that COVID-19 outbreaks in some countries will sap demand against surging energy needs in recovering economies, the Associated Press reported. Energy ministers made the decision during an online meeting Tuesday.
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