Headlines

German factory orders have deteriorated at the fastest pace since the financial crisis as the sector suffered from rising Brexit uncertainties and a slowdown in the global economy, the Financial Times reported. New factory orders fell 4.2 per cent in February from the previous month as foreign orders slumped, according to provisional data from Germany’s statistics office released on Thursday. The drop was the biggest fall since January 2017, according to Factset. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected a small month-on-month rise.

Can the EU bind future governments to promises made by previous prime ministers? It’s a Brussels dilemma that goes beyond the difficulties posed by a certain soon to be departing member state, the Financial Times reported. Greece is also becoming a test case for how the EU can wield control in a country that has escaped its leash in one sense. Athens exited nearly a decade of European bailouts last summer. After receiving hundreds of billions of euros in return for painful and swingeing economic reforms, the country is back borrowing on the debt markets.

Almost a million high earners in the UK have been hit by steep increases in their tax bills because thresholds set more than a decade ago do not rise in line with inflation, according to analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In 2008, the government set a £100,000 income threshold above which the tax-free personal allowance would be gradually withdrawn, creating a band in which people pay 60p of every £1 they earn to the exchequer, the Financial Times reported. The number of affected people has risen rapidly, from 647,000 in 2007-08 to 986,000.

Five years after the European Central Bank broke ground by cutting interest rates below zero, its officials are considering a redesign of the contentious policy as they face up to an economy and banking system that could remain fragile for a lot longer, the Financial Times reported. ECB president Mario Draghi pushed the world’s leading central banks into uncharted territory in 2014 when the eurozone deposit rate — what commercial banks pay to hold money at the ECB — went negative.

The Reserve Bank of India will issue new rules for resolving bad debts after the nation’s top court struck down an earlier directive that tightened rules for stressed asset resolution, Bloomberg News reported. The central bank “will take necessary steps including issuance of a revised circular as may be necessary for expeditious resolution of stressed assets,” RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das told reporters in Mumbai on Thursday.

One of Singapore’s highest-profile corporate debt restructurings was thrown into disarray on Thursday, as embattled water and power company Hyflux Ltd. scrapped a pact with its would-be savior, Bloomberg News reported. The rupture follows disputes in recent weeks with SM Investments Pte, the consortium of Indonesian businessmen that agreed last year to rescue Hyflux in return for a majority stake.

Nomura Holdings Inc. is embarking on yet another sweeping overhaul of its international business, as it cuts $1 billion of costs and fires dozens of employees in its struggling global trading operations, Bloomberg News reported. Japan’s largest securities firm will cull about 150 jobs across the Americas and Europe, the Middle East and Africa on top of reductions in Hong Kong and Singapore as part of the overhaul, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The collapse of budget airline WOW Air last month will dent Iceland’s economic growth this year and cause some losses in the banking system, the country’s central bank said in a Financial Stability report on Thursday. WOW Air, which had 1,000 employees, halted operations and canceled all future flights on March 28 after efforts to raise more funds had failed, Reuters reported. It was the latest budget airline to collapse as the European airline sector grapples with over-capacity and high fuel costs.

Three investors including Italian fashion entrepreneur Renzo Rosso are eyeing a possible bid for luxury label Roberto Cavalli, according to a document filed by the company with a court in Milan as it seeks breathing space from creditors, Reuters reported. The fashion company on Monday filed a request with a bankruptcy court for 120 days of protection from creditors to reach an agreement on its debt and find a new investor, after it struggled to reboot sales and faced a cash crunch.

France’s services sector fell back into contraction in March, according to a closely watched economic survey, as a series of anti-government protests continued to disrupt the economy, the Financial Times reported. The IHS Markit purchasing managers’ index, which gathers data by polling corporate executives, fell to 49.1 in March, down from 50.2 in February and below the 50 mark which separates expansion from contraction. The reading slightly bettered a Reuters poll of economists, which had forecast a figure of 48.7.