Headlines

The meltdown at Archegos Capital Management that triggered big losses at several banks highlighted the need to review rules on posting margin or cash against derivatives trades, the head of a global markets regulator said yesterday. Archegos was highly exposed to ViacomCBS Inc., whose shares plunged in March, leaving the hedge fund facing a massive margin call from its prime broker banks. Archegos was unable to meet the call to secure equity swap trades the banks had partly financed.

A ramp-up in debt sales in Europe, led by Germany’s sale of its first 30-year green bonds, sent yields jumping across the region, Bloomberg News reported. The country racked up record orders of more than 38.9 billion euros ($47 billion) for its 6 billion-euro offering. The sale comes alongside placements from the Netherlands and the U.K., helping push conventional German 30-year yields to their highest since 2019. Benchmark Italian yields headed toward 1% for the first time since September as traders bet an economic recovery will spur inflation.

Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA would need $58 billion in investment to revive its crude production to the levels of 1998 before ex-President Hugo Chavez came to power, equivalent to 3.4 million barrels per day (bpd), a document seen by Reuters shows.

A day before Michigan's deadline to close down a key crude oil pipeline, Canada on Tuesday issued its strongest remarks so far about the move, warning that it could undermine relations with the United States, its closest ally and trading partner, Reuters reported. Canadian company Enbridge Inc. is preparing for a legal battle with Michigan and courting protests from environmental groups, betting it can ignore the state's Wednesday deadline to shut down Line 5, which runs under the Straits of Mackinac. The Canadian government, intervening in the case to back Enbridge, said in a U.S.

Bickering in the European Union’s most politically volatile member state is threatening to delay the approval of the bloc’s 800 billion-euro ($973 billion) pandemic-relief package, Bloomberg News reported. Romania’s ruling coalition and opposition are far from a consensus on ratifying the Recovery Fund this month in parliament, where a two-thirds majority is required. The country is one of seven EU states yet to sign off on the financing and allow disbursements to coronavirus-battered economies to start. The bloc wants all national parliaments to ratify the decision by June.

China’s factory-gate prices jumped by the most in 3½ years in April, driven by surging commodities prices, raising concerns that inflationary pressures could spread globally, the Wall Street Journal reported. The country’s consumer-price index, a measure of inflation that tracks prices for a basket of goods and services, rose 0.9% in April from a year earlier, reaching a seven-month high. The producer-price index, a gauge of factory-gate prices, rose 6.8% last month, the fastest pace since October 2017, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday.

Myanmar's foreign exchange hit a record low of 1,660 kyat on the dollar on Monday, according to state media. Despite continuous efforts by the junta, the currency has lost 20% of its value since a military coup on Feb. 1, Nikkei Asia reported. The previous record low was 1,650 kyat on the dollar in September 2018 when the China-U.S. trade war led to a fall in the value of the yuan. That also brought down the kyat. The drop results from growing distrust in the national currency that has prompted many to turn to money changers in search of hard currencies.

European governments are acting to limit hedge funds’ participation in the market for new sovereign-bond issuance, following a surge in demand from the firms, the Wall Street Journal reported. The pushback was prompted by unusually large orders placed by hedge funds for new bonds, which can then potentially be sold—sometimes within hours—to the European Central Bank for a profit, bankers, investors and a government official said. Order books, which track demand for new bonds and help determine the prices, have ballooned since hedge funds began to pile into this trade.

The dedicated bankruptcy court has admitted the insolvency petition against Cox & Kings Financial Services Limited (CKFSL) and appointed Pardeep Kumar Sethi as interim resolution professional (IRP) for the company, the Economic Times of India reported. YES Bank had approached the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) after the company defaulted on its dues of over Rs 445 crore.