Headlines

The Bank of England found a number of UK banks were unable to measure their exposure to private equity giants and their portfolio companies and ordered them to begin stress testing those relationships, Bloomberg News reported. The central bank’s Prudential Regulatory Authority reminded lenders’ chief risk officers in a letter Tuesday that it expects them to “comprehensively identify, measure, combine, and record risks” tied to buyout funds and the companies they back.

More than 60 former employees of a collapsed contractor have waited more than five years to be paid money they are owed, ConstructionNews.co.uk reported. A new report, filed earlier this month at Companies House by administrators at Begbies Traynor, said that the ex-employees were still expected to be paid in full, but the liquidators were “continuing to liaise” with the government-backed Redundancy Payments Service (RPS) over their claims.

The Ahmedabad bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has admitted the listed road infrastructure company, Sadbhav Engineering, under the corporate insolvency resolution process in an application filed by its operational creditor, SS Infra, the Economic Times of India reported. The tribunal has also appointed Sanjay Kumar Agarwal as the interim resolution professional (IRP) of the company.

Even in 2016, the truth about China's real-estate market was obvious to anyone who knew what to look for: The boom had turned into a bubble—and was likely to end very badly, the Wall Street Journal reported. The bubble proceeded to get even worse, though, because no one wanted the music to stop. Chinese developers, home buyers, real-estate agents and even the Wall Street banks that helped underwrite the boom all ignored warning signs. Developers found ways to obscure the amount of debt they were holding, with the help of bankers and lawyers.

China’s central bank has again reiterated its cautious approach to monetary easing, reinforcing views that it’s unlikely to deliver a big liquidity boost via bond trading, the Wall Street Journal reported. Officials from the People’s Bank of China told the state-run Financial News that the central bank will stick to normal monetary policy tools, but broke weeks of silence about treasury bond trading, a policy tool it has used sparingly in the past two decades.

A surprise rate increase by Indonesia’s central bank underlines expectations that the start of monetary policy easing is looking increasingly far off for many Asian central banks, if it is on the horizon at all, the Wall Street Journal reported. As the U.S. Federal Reserve holds off on its own rate cuts and Asian currencies come under pressure, central banks in Asia face a dilemma. Lowering before the Fed does risks adding pressure to already-weak Asian currencies, pushing up prices of imported goods and services and sending inflation rates higher.

Canadian consumers haven’t tightened their belts this much in nearly a year, and there are no signs of spending growth since the start of 2024, Bloomberg News reported. Receipts for retailers were unchanged in March, according to an advance estimate from Statistics Canada released Wednesday. That followed a 0.1% drop in February. Taken together with the 0.3% plunge in January sales, the figures point to a flat reading in the first three months of the year, the weakest pace since the second quarter of 2023.

Mexico’s annual inflation shot past forecasts in the first half of April, likely cementing a rate hold at the central bank’s May monetary policy meeting, Bloomberg News reported. Official data released Wednesday showed consumer prices rose 4.63% from a year before, above all estimates in a Bloomberg survey that had a 4.51% median forecast. Core inflation, which excludes volatile items like food and fuel, slowed to 4.39%. Stubborn price pressures have made it more difficult for analysts to predict whether policymakers’ March interest rate reduction was the beginning of continuous easing.

German business sentiment improved to its highest level in a year — reinforcing recent signs that Europe’s largest economy is exiting two years of struggles, Bloomberg News reported. An expectations gauge by the Ifo institute rose to 89.9. in April from a revised 87.7 the previous month. That exceeds the 88.9 median forecast in a Bloomberg survey. A measure of current conditions also advanced. “Sentiment has improved at companies in Germany,” Ifo President Clemens Fuest said. “Companies were more satisfied with their current business. Their expectations also brightened.

Former Liverpool and England football star John Barnes has been banned as a company director after his firm failed to pay more than £190,000 ($236,290) in tax, Bloomberg News reported. The UK’s Insolvency Service said on Wednesday that Barnes’ media company paid no taxes between November 2018 and October 2020 despite making more than £400,000 in earnings. The ex-footballer, who makes regular appearances on TV, has been banned for the next three-and-a-half years, it said.