Headlines

The Indian government has notified changes to the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code, easing rules for resolution in micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), while tightening conditions to prevent conflicts of interest in pre-packaged insolvency resolution, the Economic Times of India reported.

Nearly 75% of Brazilian households are uncomfortable with their financial situation, and just over half, or 54%, are close to becoming insolvent while still trying to pay all their bills, ValorInternational.com reported. Within this group of families worried about their own financial condition, one-fifth of households are already in debt or behind on bills. Of those, nearly 25% live in cities in the Northeast. At the other end of the spectrum, one-quarter of households say they are financially comfortable.

Malaysia’s Asia Digital Engineering Sdn. Bhd. has secured a US$100mil bank loan to refinance part of its expensive private debt, a sign lenders are growing comfortable backing the company after its parent Capital A Bhd.’s exit from distressed status, TheStar.com reported. The proceeds of the loan received from Qatar’s QNB Group will be used to fund the aircraft maintenance firm’s planned expansion and capacity growth, the company said in a statement on Friday.

Mexico and the European Union are set to sign a long-stalled free trade agreement on ‌Friday as they seek to decrease dependence on the U.S. and partially insulate themselves from U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs, Reuters reported. The accord, which they reached broad agreement on in 2025 but have delayed signing, expands a Mexico-EU trade accord from 2000, which covered ​only industrial goods. The new pact adds services, government procurement, digital trade, investment and farm produce.

Europe's push to curb its dependence on U.S. payments giants Visa and Mastercard has driven a wedge between the European Central Bank and financial firms keen to shield revenues, hobbling efforts ​to build a home-grown system, several people involved said. A surge in cashless payments since the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the euro zone's reliance on U.S. firms, which ‌handle nearly two thirds of card payments in the bloc. Companies such as PayPal and Apple have also expanded.

Retail sales rose 0.9 per cent to $72.7 billion in March as higher gas prices boosted overall sales for the month, Statistics Canada said on Friday, BNNBloomberg reported. Sales at gas stations and fuel vendors rose 12.4 per cent as the attack on Iran by the U.S. and Israel drove oil and gas prices higher, the agency said. In volume terms, sales for the subsector fell 1.9 per cent for the month.

The U.K. government’s borrowings in April were higher than a year earlier, a sign that progress in narrowing its budget deficit might slow as the conflict in the Middle East pushes inflation higher and growth lower, the Wall Street Journal reported. In the fiscal year that ended in early April, the government reduced the gap between spending and revenues to its narrowest since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and plans to further cut its budget deficit over coming years.

The Indian rupee and the Philippine peso have fallen to record lows. Japan and South Korea have spent billions propping up their currencies in an attempt to avoid the same fate. The Indonesian rupiah is now weaker than it was at the depths of the Asian financial crisis, the New York Times reported. For Asian countries that rely heavily on imported energy, the war in the Middle East has already sent oil prices soaring.

Japan’s key inflation gauge rose at the slowest pace in four years as the government continued to help ease the cost of living, creating difficult optics for the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates soon, Bloomberg reported. Japan’s core consumer price index, which excludes fresh food, rose 1.4% in April from a year earlier, the internal affairs ministry said Friday. That was lower than all estimates in a survey of economists. Taking out energy prices as well, the CPI climbed 1.9% on an annual basis, also below expectations.