Headlines

Mango Airlines, the low-cost arm of state-owned South African Airways, was forced to suspend all flights after missing payments to the country’s airports regulator, Bloomberg reported. The carrier is barred from taking off or landing at any Airports Company South Africa site, which includes the main hubs in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The grounding is an indication of the deteriorating financial position at Mango. The company has been hit by the coronavirus crisis that’s hammered the airline industry, forcing bailouts and pushing some carriers into insolvency.

The European Parliament has voted by a large margin to give the European Union’s final approval to a Brexit deal already beset by difficulties, complaints and a court challenge, The New York Times reported. The tally was 660 in favor, with five against and 32 abstentions. While the outcome was never really in doubt, the Parliament expressed considerable concerns about the trustworthiness of the current British government to carry out its side of the Brexit bargain, including the trade deal that was just approved.

The national average selling price for existing homes last month was about 32 percent higher than in March 2020, and owners in communities across Canada are feeling the benefits, The Globe and Mail reported. Average prices in Chilliwack, B.C., Bancroft, Ont., and Yarmouth, N.S., were at least $100,000 higher than a year earlier, right in line with big cities such as Vancouver. By handing owners these lottery-like gains in equity, the housing market has validated the almost religious belief of Canadians that owning a house is the foundation of financial success.

Samsung’s ruling Lee family unveiled plans to pay one of the world’s largest-ever inheritance tax bills, unloading rare Picasso and Monet paintings while trumpeting its extra donations to South Korean society, the Wall Street Journal reported. South Korea’s wealthiest family faces more than $10 billion in estate taxes, following the October death of Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee. The inheritance tax rate is 50% in South Korea and that can inch higher for the transfer of company shares.

The three-month trial of a lawsuit against Toronto-Dominion Bank, in which the liquidators of the collapsed Antigua bank of former Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford are seeking $4.5 billion in damages, is expected to end on Wednesday, Reuters reported. A written judgment from the court is expected in a few months. In closing arguments at the Ontario Superior Court, lawyers for the court-appointed joint liquidators of Stanford International Bank (SIB) alleged negligence and "knowing assistance" by TD in providing a correspondent banking account that Stanford used to perpetuate fraud.

Restaurants, pubs, malls and retailers in India are once again staring into a dark abyss as more metros go into lockdowns, The Times of India reported. Many restaurants shut down last year after the painful two-and-a-half months of lockdown. More are expected to now follow suit, unable to bear losses for a second year on the trot. Restaurants across the country had seen sales pick up since opening before the festive season, and by December, footfalls were robust with weekends reporting near full capacity.

Finland’s ruling coalition came to an agreement on spending plans, averting a collapse of the Nordic nation’s Social Democrat-led government by a thin margin, Bloomberg reported. The five-party cabinet patched up its differences, forging a common vision of how Finland’s recovery from the pandemic should take place, Prime Minister Sanna Marin said. The broad outlines of the deal are now agreed, and the government will continue hammering out the details, she said.

Give Asia's central bankers their credit. By taking swift and determined action, they have kept financial systems on an even keel during the pandemic, and their policies have cushioned the economic blow, Nikkei Asia reported. As the emergency begins to pass, however, there is a risk that overly loose monetary policy will breed distortions. If left unheeded, these could eventually trigger another crisis: a bursting asset bubble. Central bankers will need to reach deeper into their tool kit to maintain the right balance between supporting the recovery and avoiding calamity later on.

Toyota Motor Corp. will acquire Lyft Inc.’s self-driving technology unit for $550 million, as the Japanese firm steps up its automation ambitions with the newly created Woven Planet division, Reuters reported. The acquisition of Level 5 automation will also provide Toyota access to the U.S. ride-hailing firm's more than 300 employees of the essentially complete autonomy technology. For Lyft, the deal will allow it to become profitable sooner and takes away the burden and risk of developing a costly technology that has yet to enter the mainstream.

The European Commission has launched legal action against pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca over shortfalls in deliveries of its COVID-19 vaccine, which had once been expected to form the backbone of the continent’s inoculation strategy before falling starkly behind, The Irish Times reported. Under its contract with the EU, the British-Swedish company committed to make “best reasonable efforts” to deliver 300 million doses between December and June, but later revised this figure down to 100 million, a shortfall that slowed vaccine rollouts across the continent.