Headlines

A top Indian government official on Monday said the nation’s non-banking housing finance companies were facing liquidity stress, in comments that are likely to put more pressure on the Indian central bank to ease its policy towards the sector, Reuters reported. The intervention by Corporate Affairs Secretary Injeti Srinivas came after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and other government officials raised the issue of a liquidity crunch at a meeting with Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Governor Urjit Patel and other regulators last week.

Faith in the European economy continues to wane with two surveys of economic confidence back to levels not seen since 2016, the Financial Times reported. The Sentix survey of 1,000 investors reported the lowest reading in its headline eurozone index since October 2016. The gauge has fallen for the past three months to read 8.8 in November. Meanwhile, the Ifo Institute said on Monday its economic climate measure for the bloc was also the lowest since the middle of 2016 in the fourth quarter.

Chinese stocks are among the world’s worst performers this year. An economy that’s growing at its slowest pace since 2009 and the U.S.-China trade war are certainly dragging them down, but there’s an even bigger problem: The private sector—businesses not owned or controlled by the state—is broke, Bloomberg News reported. The government has initiated programs to keep businesses afloat, but they’re unlikely to be enough. The cash crunch is a side effect of Beijing’s recent attempts to curb risky financial behaviors.

Brexit uncertainty contributed to a sharp slowdown in Britain’s dominant services sector in October, according to a survey of executives. The IHS Markit services purchasing managers’ index revealed the slowest pace of growth since the snowstorms at the start of the year, the Financial Times reported. The headline reading fell to 52.2 in October, down from 53.9 in September and far below City economists’ expectations of 53.8. Monday’s survey is the most important economic data yet published to suggest that fraught Brexit negotiations are harming Britain’s real economy.

Eurozone finance ministers have urged Italy to bow to Brussels’ calls to redraft a bud­get plan that breaks European spending rules, brushing aside attempts by Rome to defend the fiscal expansion as key to reviving the country’s economy, the Financial Times reported. Ministers called on Italy’s populist government on Monday to engage in talks with Brussels on a revised draft budget for 2019, backing the European Commission’s view that the plans violate previous commitments by Rome to shrink the deficit next year.

Real estate price growth is slowing and bond defaults are rising, but this isn’t the time to short China’s big property companies. China Evergrande Group, the short sellers’ favorite punt until they were burned by a rebound, is now back in their sights, a Bloomberg View reported. The developer’s shares are down 37 percent from an October 2017 peak, and its dollar bonds are just coming off record lows. But a groaning debt load doesn’t tell the whole story.

South African Airways is looking at ways to roll over 9.2 billion rand ($640 million) of debt by March as the loss-making state-owned carrier works to make more routes profitable, Chief Executive Officer Vuyani Jarana said. The airline has emerged as a major headache for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government as it battles to ease the burden of state-owned companies on public finances, Bloomberg News reported.

Crawshaw Group plc said two Ernst & Young LLP executive were appointed as joint administrators, after the UK meat retailer said last week it did not have sufficient cash to restructure, Reuters reported. The company joins a growing list of British retailers that have been forced to seek protection from creditors after being hit hard by competition from online shopping platforms and a rise in costs from the pound’s Brexit-induced weakness.

Brazilian companies are again looking to raise capital by selling shares or refinancing debt as the pre-election uncertainty that put such dealmaking into a deep freeze gives way to optimism after the selection of market-friendly candidate Jair Bolsonaro as president, five people familiar with the matter told Reuters. One of the sources, who asked for anonymity to disclose details of private negotiations, said that up to 10 companies are in talks with investment bankers to sell shares and five other companies are planning bond transactions by January, Reuters reported.

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said on Monday the central bank was aware that prolonged ultra-loose monetary policy could squeeze financial institutions' margins and potentially destabilize the country's banking system, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Given subdued inflation and uncertainty surrounding overseas economies, however, he said the BOJ needed to maintain its massive stimulus programme while keeping a watchful eye on the merits and costs of its policy.