Headlines

Argentina was not invited to the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 that created the IMF, and it did not join until 1956, The Economist reported. But it has been making its presence felt ever since. At the end of August a team from the IMF visited Buenos Aires to assess the lie of the land before deciding whether to give Argentina’s government, led by Mauricio Macri, any more of the record $57bn loan (worth over 10% of Argentina’s 2018 GDP) agreed last year. But as the team left town, the landscape shifted.

When policymakers at the European Central Bank meet next week to debate the prospect of a fresh economic stimulus package, one of the key issues on the table will be whether their own measures are doing more harm than good, the Financial Times reported. The era of unprecedented monetary policy loosening that Mario Draghi launched in 2012 when he declared that he would do “whatever it takes” to support the single currency heralded a shift towards negative interest rates. The ECB’s main deposit rate hit zero that year and successive cuts have left it at -0.4 per cent since 2016.

Accountancy firm Deloitte & Touche said on Thursday it has been appointed by Singapore’s high court to act as interim judicial manager for marine fuel supplier Inter-Pacific Group Pte (IPG) in an application for a court-led debt restructuring process, Reuters reported. The appointment, following a nomination by IPG, comes more than two months after IPG unit Inter-Pacific Petroleum Pte (IPP) had a licence to operate bunker fuel tankers suspended by Singapore’s Maritime Port Authority (MPA). The MPA detected operational irregularities during an inspection.

Peugeot automaker PSA Group and its Chinese partner Dongfeng Group have hammered out a plan to restructure their joint venture operations, slashing costs in the short term and aiming to boost annual sales to 400,000 vehicles by 2025, PSA said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobiles (DPCA), the joint venture based in Wuhan, central China, plans to reduce the break-even point to below 180,000 vehicles in 2019 and further reduce to below 150,000 vehicles between 2020 and 2021, according to a post on PSA’s social media account in China.

Ayondo GmbH (AYG), the Frankfurt-based subsidiary of the retail trading group, has filed for insolvency, Finance Magnates reported. Updates on the group’s stock exchange news feed indicate that the company, which provides social trading services, made the filings on 14th of August. Just over a week later, on the 22nd of August, ayondo also said that ayondo Holding AG, a Swiss subsidiary of the group and the parent company of AYG, had also filed for insolvency.

Restructuring of JSC Ukrzaliznytsia can last from one to three-four years depending on the scenario the government will choose, Ukrzaliznytsia head Yevhen Kravtsov told the journalists in the European Business Association (EBA) on Wednesday, Interfax reported. "There was an instruction to prepare a restructuring plan for Ukrzaliznytsia. For our part, we completely got in this process. We have already suggested in previous discussions with the minister a possible scenario for restructuring.

Sweden’s central bank plans still to raise interest rates this year or early next but increases would then be at a slower pace than previously forecast, prompting the currency to rally against the euro in early trading, the Financial Times reported. The Riksbank, in a statement on Thursday accompanying its decision to keep rates on hold at minus 0.25 per cent, said that “as before” borrowing costs “are expected to be raised towards the end of the year or at the beginning of next year”.

There is no predicting where the UK is headed: an election, a no-deal Brexit, a second referendum, all of the above? But we can say something about the state in which the UK economy finds itself on the cusp of whatever it is that it is facing, the Financial Times reported. That state is evidently not good. Since the Brexit referendum, UK growth has been lagging behind that of the G7 as a whole, after leading it for the preceding four years. The past quarter put the UK at the very bottom of the G7 growth table, with a contraction of 0.2 (an annualised rate of nearly 1 per cent).

Aabar Investment’s bonds, worth 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion), have lost about a quarter of their value this week after an auditor of the Abu Dhabi company gave an “adverse opinion” on its 2018 financial statements, Reuters reported. Aabar was a subsidiary of International Petroleum Investment Co (IPIC), which is now part of Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala Investment Co.

Deutsche Bank’s chief executive has warned about the negative side effects of a likely cut in interest rates by the European Central Bank next week, arguing it would do little to stimulate the economy but would deepen divisions in society, the Financial Times reported. Christian Sewing told a banking conference in Frankfurt that an expected lowering of eurozone interest rates further into negative territory “may make refinancing cheaper for governments but it will have serious side-effects”.