Headlines

Digital bank Qiwi, whose Russian license was revoked by the Russian central bank earlier this month, said on Monday it saw no sign of bankruptcy in its operations and a liquidation process agreed in January should proceed without difficulty, Reuters reported. Nasdaq-listed Qiwi, a Russian analogue to PayPal, had 29 million users at the end of 2022 and 13.8 million active wallets. The Russian central bank, which has taken regulatory action against Qiwi five times in the last year, said Qiwi Bank had engaged in high-risk operations.

The number of cases admitted for the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) has risen 18% year-on-year to 7,325 as of December 2023, from 6,199 cases as of December 2022, according to the latest data from the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI), the Financial Express reported. However, there has been a sequential decline in new admissions for the CIRP, with 244 cases being admitted in the third quarter of the current fiscal year, down from 250 cases in the second quarter.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has ordered initiation of corporate insolvency resolution process against real estate special purpose vehicle (SPV) Sankalp Siddhi Developers, the Economic Times of India reported. The SPV was promoted by Ahuja Hive, now known as Hive Carbon-Zero Developers, for the development of a project in Mumbai's Jogeshwari suburb, and has been controlled and managed by Chinese group Fosun since 2022.

A city council has said it will have to effectively declare bankruptcy if its application for emergency government help is refused, BBC.com reported. Southampton City Council said that it had ended efforts to meet a £39m budget shortfall for 2024-25 on its own.

Leading German sportscar racing outfit Project 1 Motorsport has filed for bankruptcy and will not contest the DTM in 2024, MotorSport.com reported. The team entering its 30th season, run by Hans-Bernd Kamps, has also announced that its event company Project 1 Drivetime, which ran the BMW M2 Cup on the DTM undercard, will also close down.

As fears about U.S. commercial real estate roiled German banks this month, their message was clear: don’t worry, the vast majority of our property exposure is domestic. That may not prove the comfort it seems, Bloomberg News reported. While the country has so far avoided the rapid market corrections that rattled the US, experts argue that reflects arcane accounting practices shielding its lenders and investors from taking immediate hits.

Japan's core consumer inflation slowed for a third straight month in January but beat forecasts and held at the central bank's 2% target, keeping alive expectations it will end negative interest rates by April, Reuters reported. The 2.0% gain in the core consumer prices index (CPI) was slower than the 2.3% increase in December, internal affairs and communications ministry data showed on Tuesday, underscoring views waning cost-push inflation from commodity imports could ease the pain of higher living costs.

Nigeria’s central bank, in its first policy meeting since July, announced a supersized increase in interest rates to tackle runaway inflation and stem the collapse in the country’s currency, Bloomberg News reported. Governor Olayemi Cardoso and his other 11 monetary policy committee colleagues on Tuesday raised the benchmark rate by 400 basis points to 22.75%. That exceeded the 21.25% median estimate of 12 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Brazil's inflation picked up in mid-February driven by higher education prices, but landed slightly below market expectations, government statistics agency IBGE said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The IPCA-15 consumer price index rose 0.78% in the period, while economists polled by Reuters expected an increase of 0.82%. In the same period of the previous month, inflation had hit 0.31%. n annual terms, inflation came in at 4.49%, below the expected 4.52%.

Bank of Nova Scotia missed analysts’ estimates for loan-loss provisions amid growing stress in consumer lending as the Canadian economy weakens as well as higher delinquencies among retail borrowers in its Latin American businesses, Bloomberg News reported. Provisions for credit losses rose to C$962 million ($713 million) in the fiscal first quarter, the Toronto-based bank said in a statement Tuesday. That was more than the C$922 million average estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg survey.