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Canada’s economy sprang back to life at the end of the second quarter, as vaccine-led reopenings spurred a return to growth, Bloomberg News reported. Canada’s economy sprang back to life at the end of the second quarter, as vaccine-led reopenings spurred a return to growth. Last month, broad-based reopenings across the country allowed businesses to resume operations after months of shutdowns. As a result, high-contact sectors returned to growth, along with manufacturing, according to Statistics Canada. Canada’s currency was little changed, trading at C$1.2432 per U.S. dollar at 9:21 a.m.
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The euro zone economy grew faster than expected in the second quarter, pulling out of a pandemic-induced recession, while the easing of coronavirus curbs also helped inflation shoot past the European Central Bank's 2% target in July, Reuters reported. The European Union's statistics office Eurostat said on Friday that its initial estimate showed gross domestic product (GDP) in the 19 countries that use the euro had expanded 2.0% in April-June from the previous quarter.
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The German economy returned to growth in the second quarter but bounced back less strongly than expected amid supply chain bottlenecks thatare hitting industry, data showed on Friday, Reuters reported. Europe's largest economy grew by 1.5% quarter on quarter, compared with a revised contraction of 2.1% in the first quarter, and by 9.2% on the year, the Federal Statistics Office said. A Reuters poll had forecast increases of 2.0% and 9.6% respectively.
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Peruvian assets tumbled on concern new President Pedro Castillo’s top economic adviser may not take a cabinet role, further fueling investor anxiety over his government’s plans to remake the economy, Bloomberg News reported. An ETF tracking Peru stocks fell more than 7%, the currency had its worst day since 1994 and overseas bonds due in 2031 slipped to the lowest in seven weeks.
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The liquidator of a Kildare company linked to a Germany property group that collapsed last year, resulting in losses of up to €107 million for Irish investors, has queried the “significant” level of salaries, fees and expenses paid out by the Irish firm before it became insolvent, the Irish Times reported. Hanover-based German Property Group (GPG), formerly known as Dolphin Trust, collapsed last year after taking €1.5 billion from investors in the Republic, the UK, Asia and elsewhere since it was set up by businessman Charles Smethurst in 2008.
The leveraged loan market could soon pivot away from the London interbank offered rate for new deals after officials endorsed a series of forward-looking benchmarks tied to its main U.S. replacement, Bloomberg News reported. The Federal Reserve-backed Alternative Reference Rates Committee’s ratification of a term structure for the Secured Overnight Financing Rate should allow bankers and borrowers to begin using the benchmarks as soon as September, according to Meredith Coffey, executive vice president of research & public policy at the Loan Syndications and Trading Association.
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The row over insurers’ failure to pay out on business interruption cover dominates the latest set of rulings announced by the Financial Services Ombudsman, the Irish Times reported. The digest of decisions – the sixth published by the ombudsman’s office – gives summaries of 21 decisions issued during 2020 and 2021, of which 12 relate to the investigation of complaints relating to business interruption insurance. “To date, we have received 1,051 complaints arising from the circumstances surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic,” the ombudsman, Ger Deering, said.
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Australia’s Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombud is calling on the federal government to ‘reactivate’ temporary insolvency protections that will help cushion small and family businesses during public health ordered lockdowns, the Mandarin reported. The number of businesses going into administration increased by 75% in the last week of June 2021, according to new data released by CreditorWatch.
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Singapore Airlines faces an uneven road to recovery as the more contagious delta variant of the new coronavirus and a persisting pandemic threaten to upend the resumption of mass travel worldwide, Nikkei Asia reported. The Singapore Exchange-listed company on Thursday reported a net loss of 409 million Singapore dollars ($302 million) for the April to June quarter -- the first in its new financial year, after racking up an annual net loss of SG$4.27 billion the year before.
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Of all the numbers that lay bare the pandemic plight of blue-collar workers, few are as jarring as the pay cut suffered by the millions of Argentines who toil in off-the-book jobs, Bloomberg News reported. The decline for people like waiters, construction workers and candy-vendors was 36% on average last year, considering inflation. That staggering number is almost four times the average pay cut that Argentines in the formal economy had to absorb.