Headlines

Southeast Asia's largest lender, DBS Group Holdings, reported a 72% surge in net profit for the three months ending in March, keenly eyeing a strong recovery in 2021 after a tough year last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Nikkei Asia reported. The bank booked a record net profit of 2 billion Singapore dollars ($1.51 billion) for the period, compared with SG$1.17 billion the year before, marking a shift toward performance levels seen before the new coronavirus outbreak overshadowed most of 2020.

The euro-area economy slid into a double-dip recession at the start of the year as strict coronavirus lockdowns across the region kept many businesses shuttered and consumers wary to spend, Bloomberg reported. Reports from some of its biggest members show how far behind the European Union is in recovering from the pandemic amid a slow vaccine rollout. Output in the 19-nation euro area was down 0.6% in the first quarter and declined at nearly three times that pace in Germany. In contrast, the U.S. posted annualized growth of 6.4% — fueled by a rush of household spending.

Budget airline Norwegian Air expects demand for European short-haul travel to return to pre-pandemic levels in 2023 or 2024, it said as it presented a first-quarter pretax loss of 1.19 billion crowns ($145 million) and Reuters reported. The carrier this month said it aims to raise 6 billion crowns in fresh capital, up from the 4.5 billion originally planned, as part of a scheme to emerge from court-ordered bankruptcy protection next month.

Shares rose in early European trading on Friday after retreating in Asia as the latest batch of economic data provided mixed signals about prospects for the recovery from the pandemic, the Associated Press reported. Two surveys showed Chinese manufacturing expanded in April but growth appeared to be slowing. Figures showed Europe’s economy contracted in the first three months of the year, while the U.S. economy steamed ahead, growing at a 6.4% annual pace.

Zambia, which defaulted on payments to bondholders in November, is doubling down on debt with a high-stakes bet that nationalizing one of its biggest copper mines will help rescue its flailing economy,  The Wall Street Journal reported. Once seen as among the most investment-friendly countries in the region, the landlocked nation in south central Africa is the most extreme example of a wave of populist governments in mining-dependent countries that are struggling to pay the bills after borrowing for infrastructure in recent years.

If it makes you feel better to say Canada’s housing market is a bubble, go ahead and say it. Everyone else has, The Globe and Mail reported. Ten years ago, The Economist magazine concluded Canadian real estate was grossly overvalued. Nine years ago, Merrill Lynch declared Canadian housing was afflicted by “overvaluation, speculation and oversupply.” Seven years ago, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund began sounding sirens about the dysfunctional state of Canadian housing.

Insurance Regulator and Development Authority of India (Irdai) has told insurers to communicate their cashless approvals for COVID-19 claims within an hour of submission of the request by the hospital and ensure that patients get discharged soon, The Times of India reported. In its order, the Delhi HC had told Irdai to issue immediate instructions to insurance companies to ensure that they communicate their approvals to hospitals within 30 to 60 minutes, in order to ensure that patient discharge is not delayed.

The eurozone is at risk of a “tsunami” of bankruptcies as COVID life-support schemes for businesses are wound up, regulators have warned and  The Telegraph reported. A report by the EU's key risk watchdog, which is chaired by European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde, said that companies may struggle to stay solvent the longer they relied on emergency financial support. This could cause debt to accumulate, increasing the risk of a pent-up wave of insolvencies.

Airbus announced that it had returned to a profit in the first quarter following a 1.1 billion euro loss last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, but its top executive warned that the economic toll would continue, the New York Times reported. “The first quarter shows that the crisis is not yet over for our industry, and that the market remains uncertain,” Guillaume Faury, chief executive of the world’s largest airplane maker, said.

Fewer people are defaulting on loans due to the pandemic than expected, two major banks have said and the BBC reported. NatWest Group, which owns RBS, was able to release £102m it had set aside for bad loans in the first quarter after "better than expected" repayments. Standard Chartered meanwhile took a $20 million hit from bad loans in the same period — down by $354 million from the previous quarter. Earlier this week, HSBC and Lloyds both reported a similar trend.