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German towns and cities are pulling money from small, private banks, spooked after losing millions in the closure of Greensill Bank, an experience they said has shattered their faith in the country’s government and financial system, Reuters reported. Part of financier Lex Greensill’s insolvent Greensill Capital, the bank collapsed this month and triggered a 2 billion euro ($2.34 billion) bill for Germany’s deposit protection scheme. But towns and cities are excluded from this shield and are nursing losses of hundreds of millions of euros.
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Credit Suisse Group AG is seeking to push one of Sanjeev Gupta’s key commodities-trading units into insolvency, presenting a new threat to his metal empire after the collapse of his biggest lender, YahooFinance reported. The application to wind up Liberty Commodities Ltd. was filed in the U.K.’s insolvency court late Tuesday by a unit of Citigroup Inc. Citi was acting under instructions from Credit Suisse, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information.
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On Friday, 26 March 2021, the Belgian Insolvency Law was amended with the introduction of a pre-packaged insolvency procedure, allowing the debtor to discretely prepare for judicial reorganisation proceedings under the supervision of a judicial administrator, according to an analysis on JDSupra.com. Other noteworthy changes include (i) a lower threshold for the opening of judicial reorganisation proceedings, and (ii) the more flexible appointment of judicial administrators.
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China’s economic recovery picked up a surprising amount of steam in March, boosted by strong domestic consumption and unquenchable foreign demand for Chinese-made goods, the Wall Street Journal reported. The country’s official manufacturing purchasing managers index, a gauge of factory activity, hit a three-month high of 51.9 in March, topping February’s reading of 50.6 with the 50 mark separating expansion from contraction, according to data released Wednesday by the National Bureau of Statistics.
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France and Italy are set to extend virus restrictions as Europe struggles to contain a sharp increase in infections due to new variants, Bloomberg News reported. The resurgence in the outbreak is a setback for governments, whose plans to get life back to normal and revive their economies have already been stymied by a slow vaccine rollout across the European Union. The French virus spike has been particularly bad, and Germany and Spain last week imposed border restrictions to travelers coming from the country. French President Emmanuel Macron is due to address the nation at 8 p.m.
The Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 introduced a number of temporary changes to UK insolvency laws last year, according to a commentary in the National Law Review. Those changes, together with other measures such as the moratorium on forfeiture proceedings have recently been extended, we assume, to avoid the perceived cliff edge of insolvencies that might follow if such measures are brought to an end abruptly.
A $40 million potential fraud that threatens to wipe out a chunk of OSB Group Plc’s profits is linked to a client with a niche business line: piano leasing, Bloomberg News reported. The British lender has filed to place Duet Capital (Holdings) Ltd. into administration, a form of U.K. bankruptcy, and contacted the Financial Conduct Authority about the suspected fraud, according to a corporate filing and people familiar with the matter.
The brokerage arm of Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group on Tuesday flagged potential losses of around $300 million at its European subsidiary related to an unnamed U.S. client, Reuters reported. The potential loss does not have any material impact on the business capability of the securities arm, or its European unit, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Holdings Co Ltd said in a statement. It did not name the U.S. client. However, the revelation comes after global banks, including rival Nomura Holdings, were bracing for the fall-out from the downfall of hedge fund Archegos Capital.
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The coming weeks in Australia could bring on the biggest economic shock since the pandemic itself, with the end of the $90 billion JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme, ABC.net.au reported. Business owners, bureaucrats and insolvency experts are cautiously awaiting the fallout. Insolvency laws were essentially placed on hold during the pandemic, due to the rolling uncertainty and how difficult it was to predict future business. As a result, the number of companies winding up halved in 2020, despite Australia being in its first recession in three decades.
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The European Central Bank must be cautious when it shifts away from its emergency stimulus even if the economy rebounds from the pandemic as predicted, according to outgoing policy maker Vitas Vasiliauskas, Bloomberg News reported. The Governing Council member and head of Lithuania’s central bank, who steps down from those roles next month, said in an interview that the ECB should draw on its earlier experiences of tightening too soon. That means switching back to more-standard monetary tools only gradually.
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