Headlines

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s hometown is among a fresh wave of UK town halls seeking government approval for emergency financial support in a last-ditch bid to avoid bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Southampton City Council applied to the government for “exceptional financial support” last week, a move that could buy it more time to avert the bankruptcies that caused crises at Birmingham, Nottingham and Woking. It is seeking a capitalization direction that allows councils to fund day-to-day spending from their capital resources, including borrowing and asset sales.

A South Korean bankruptcy court judge has called on the government to bolster regulation in the crypto industry, claiming investors need more protection, CryptoNews.com reported. Per Newsis, the claims were made by Judge Lee Seok-jun, of the Seoul Bankruptcy Court. Lee wrote a paper on “regulations intended to protect virtual asset investors.” The paper was published in the most recent issue of the Court of Korea’s academic journal Sabeub. A slew of crypto-related legal changes come into force in July this year when the Virtual Asset User Protection Act becomes law.

Bonds of Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA slumped further into distressed territory as investors question whether the Brazilian airline will be able to strike a deal with creditors, Bloomberg News reported. Dollar notes maturing in 2026 were down nearly 11 cents on the dollar to around 24 cents on Tuesday, according to Trace data, pushing the yield to 88%. It was the biggest decline in the US junk bond market Tuesday. The rout comes after local newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported on Sunday the company is mulling filing for chapter 11 within a month.

Ghana has won a moratorium with official creditors on debt payments through May 2026, and expects to reach a deal with eurobond investors to revamp $13 billion debt by the end of March, Bloomberg News reported. Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta said the payments owed on $5.4 billion of bilateral obligations would be repaid in two tranches in 16 and 17 years’ time, under the terms of the deal struck in principle last week. It was the first time he has publicly shared these details of the pact.

Inflation in Britain rose slightly in December, picking up for the first time in almost a year, after a change in tobacco taxes pushed up prices, the New York Times reported. Consumer prices rose 4 percent in December from a year earlier, up from 3.9 percent the previous month, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. Despite the unexpected uptick, inflation is still near its slowest pace in two years and well below where the nation’s central bank thought it would end 2023.

China's troubled property market ended last year with the worst declines in new home prices in nearly nine years, despite government efforts to prop up the sector that was once a key driver of the world's second largest economy, Reuters reported. New home prices in December logged their steepest drop since February 2015, while property sales measured by floor area fell 23% in December from a year earlier, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Wednesday.

China’s economic growth rate finished at one of the lowest levels in decades last year, underscoring the heavy toll that a property-sector collapse and weak consumer confidence have taken on the world’s second-largest economy despite the lifting of all Covid-19 restrictions, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product in China expanded 5.2% in the fourth quarter and for the full year in 2023, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday.

Sweden’s housing starts probably reached a new low last month as struggling home builders are continuing to postpone and cancel new projects, Bloomberg News reported. New home construction has fallen by 68% from a peak in August 2021, with a decline of 4.7% on month in December, an indicator published Wednesday by data provider Byggfakta Group showed. Previous months’ outcomes were also revised lower when factoring in new information on project cancellations, suggesting that a stabilization in activity is reversed.

The European Central Bank is likely to cut interest rates in the summer, according to President Christine Lagarde, Bloomberg News reported. She was asked at the World Economic Forum in Davos if there could be majority support for such a move, given that several policymakers have signaled that timing. “I would say it’s likely too,” Lagarde said.

Moldova’s central bank chief said a collapse in inflation showed that the abrupt turn away from Russian energy had paid off as the republic wedged between Ukraine and Romania seeks accession to the European Union, Bloomberg News reported. Central Bank Governor Anca Dragu said an influx of EU financial aid and fresh energy supplies from Romania were behind last year’s slowdown in inflation to 4.2% from more than 30% in 2022. The recovery after the turmoil brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was far more robust than Moldova’s authorities had initially expected, she said.