Headlines

The Lebanese central bank’s refusal to provide full data for a forensic audit may force consultancy Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) to walk away or wait for a new cabinet to salvage the review, a key condition for foreign aid, two sources close to the matter said, Reuters reported. Banque du Liban (BDL) said in a statement on Wednesday that it had provided its own accounts to the turnaround specialist hired by Lebanon this year, but that it should be the government that submits full state accounts to the audit.

The euro zone’s economic recovery stalled last month as a second wave of coronavirus cases and restrictions imposed to try and contain it whacked activity in the bloc’s dominant service industry, pointing to a double-dip recession, a survey showed, The Irish Times reported. Alongside their peers, Germany and France -- the 19-country bloc’s two biggest economies -- have reimposed tough lockdown measures, likely dealing a heavy blow this month as restaurants, gyms and shops remain closed and citizens stay at home.

Mexican airline Aeromexico has requested permission from U.S. bankruptcy court to dismiss 1,830 employees in a cost-saving measure to weather the economic shocks of the coronavirus crisis, according to court filings filed on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The proposed layoffs, of 855 unionized workers and another 975 who do not belong to a union, would save the company $44 million on a recurring annual basis, Aeromexico said.

Thai budget carrier Nok Airlines Pcl obtained court approval to proceed with a debt rehabilitation plan as it weathers a slump in passenger demand due to the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. The nation’s Central Bankruptcy Court said Nok Air should submit its plan by the first quarter of next year, the company said in an exchange filing Wednesday. The pandemic has devastated global aviation, forcing airlines to suspend flights, lay off employees and seek financial help from governments and investors.

Markets face some disruption in January if Britain and the European Union fail to agree on continued two-way cross-border access, top British regulators said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Britain has left the EU and continued full access to the bloc under a transition arrangement expires on Dec. 31, with the City of London facing patchy access to the bloc in future. The EU is still deciding on how much direct financial market access it can give Britain under a system whereby Brussels deems British rules to be “equivalent” to its own.

National Australia Bank on Thursday posted a 36.6% fall in annual profit, hurt by higher loan loss provisions for the COVID-19 pandemic, customer and payroll remediation, and higher wages, Reuters reported. Australia’s third largest lender also warned costs would keep rising in the next few years, and asset quality would deteriorate in the pandemic-stressed economy. NAB reported full-year cash earnings of A$3.71 billion ($2.66 billion), compared with a restated figure of A$5.85 billion last year. Analysts polled by Reuters on average expected cash earnings of A$3.82 billion.

The Covid-19 pandemic has put small businesses under considerable financial strain relative to larger companies, with the shock to their turnover creating significant cash-flow challenges in some sectors, Central Bank deputy governor Ed Sibley said at a Small Firms Association webinar on Wednesday, The Irish Times reported. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are operating in a very difficult and uncertain environment, despite interventions to cushion the effects of the crisis, Mr Sibley said.

Services companies in Italy and Spain suffered a fresh fall in activity last month as restrictions to contain the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic hit businesses, according to a widely watched business survey, the Financial Times reported. The IHS Markit flash services purchasing managers’ index dropped in both countries, with companies reporting sharp declines in demand and activity as a result of the pandemic, data released on Wednesday showed. The Spanish index was slightly better than most economists expected but still fell 1 point to a five-month low of 41.4 in October.

A resurgence of the pandemic is threatening to tip the eurozone into a double-dip recession, cutting short the recovery that took shape from the middle of this year, the Financial Times reported. Few if any economists expect a slump as severe as the 11.8 per cent quarter-on-quarter contraction recorded between April and June. But services, which account for about three-quarters of economic activity in the 19-nation eurozone, are bearing the brunt of the tight restrictions on people’s movement that governments are reimposing in an effort to control Covid-19.

The European Securities and Markets Authority has criticised Germany’s financial regulator BaFin and the country’s accounting watchdog FREP for their “deficient” handling of the Wirecard accounting scandal. In a report published on Tuesday, in which the regulator detailed the result of its investigation into the Wirecard accounting fraud, Esma wrote that BaFin and FREP ignored red flags over Wirecard’s financial reporting for years, the Financial Times reported.