Headlines

Leaders of the world’s top central banks warned Wednesday that escalating trade conflicts could ricochet through financial markets and hurt the world economy, potentially prolonging the era of ultralow interest rates, The Wall Street Journal reported. Rising tensions over trade come at an awkward time for major central banks, which have started moving away from easy-money policies introduced since the global financial crisis.

As Greece prepares to emerge from one of the region’s most wrenching economic periods, its creditors are drawing up plans to ensure it is never a problem for the rest of Europe again, the International New York Times reported. European Union officials will unveil a blueprint in Brussels on Thursday to help the beleaguered country stand on its own once it comes off its third financial bailout in August. They have heralded Greece’s revival, and pointed to the closing of its bailout as a symbolic end to a ruinous financial crisis.

The European Central Bank could ditch a plan to impose new rules on all euro zone banks under its watch to reduce their bad loans, and could instead move toward a “case-by-case approach”, the head of its supervisory body said on Tuesday. Plans by the ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) to force banks to set aside cash within a given timeframe against the large pile of soured credit they hold has met resistance from bankers, lawmakers and even within the central bank, Reuters reported.

Abraaj said a Cayman Court appointed provisional liquidators, allowing the troubled private equity group to launch a court-supervised restructuring plan, the Financial Times reported. The Dubai-based firm in a statement on Tuesday said a court order on Monday appointed executives from PwC as joint provisional liquidators of Abraaj Holdings and executives from Deloitte for the same role at the asset management arm, Abraaj Investment Management Limited, or Aiml.

In a related story, Reuters reported that an Abu Dhabi Financial Group company has made a conditional $50 million offer to buy private equity firm Abraaj’s investment management business, a document reviewed by Reuters shows. Abu Dhabi Capital Management’s (ADCM) bid is well below the $125 million offered by New York-based Cerberus Capital Management before Dubai-based Abraaj filed for provisional liquidation in the Cayman Islands last week, Reuters reported. It was unclear whether the terms of the offer that Cerberus made were different from the one made by ADCM.

Telstra Corp. plans to cut 8,000 jobs, sell assets and potentially spin off a new infrastructure business in a make-or-break attempt to fend off competition, Bloomberg News reported. The stock tumbled. Australia’s former phone monopoly, which has lost more than half its market value since early 2015, said it will almost double its cost-cutting program. An asset carve-off will raise as much as to A$2 billion, and one in four executive and middle management roles will go over the the next three years. “We are now at a tipping point,” Chief Executive Officer Andrew Penn said in a statement.

Central Bank governor Philip Lane said on Tuesday that he expected property prices in Ireland to “cool off” over time as supply increased, although he pointed to the continuing “strong fundamentals” of the market here, the Irish Times reported. Irish house prices have risen by 76 per cent from the post-crash trough, with Dublin residential property prices up 90.1 per cent from their February 2012 lows, while a recent survey from Knight Frank placed Ireland as the fourth fastest growing property market in the world.

Europe has finally emerged from its debt crisis with healthy economic growth, but it can’t shake one relic of its troubled times: negative interest rates. The policy was tried by Sweden briefly in 2009 and 2010 but eventually was implemented by Denmark, the eurozone, Switzerland and Sweden again over the subsequent five years before landing in Japan two years ago, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A bruising trade fight with the U.S. lands at a difficult time for China as its economy contends with rising headwinds, constraining Chinese President Xi Jinping’s options, The Wall Street Journal reported. While Chinese officials have been bracing for a trade war for months—promising to match the Trump administration measure for measure—signs are rising that China’s recent economic expansion is ebbing, from weakening investment and household consumption to increasing corporate defaults, in part due to a key Xi initiative to contain debt and fend off financial risks.

There have been high-profile insolvencies of many real estate and housing development companies across the country, ZeeBiz reported. Scores of homebuyers, particularly in NCR, have some relief as now they will be treated as financial creditors. Homebuyers are recognised as financial creditors under the insolvency law, with the government promulgating an ordinance. President Ram Nath Kovind gave his assent to promulgate the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Ordinance, 2018 last week. What are the next steps to take? How do you protect your financial interest?