Headlines

The Bank of Japan said on Tuesday it would maintain its massive asset buying programme at existing levels but offered a bleaker view of the economy, suggesting it may roll out more stimulus as it struggles to reach an elusive inflation target, the International New York Times reported. However, the central bank appeared to back-pedal on its recent radical shift to negative interest rates, highlighting the dilemma the BOJ faces as it struggles to respond to renewed signs of economic weakness with dwindling policy options.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals cut its 2016 revenue forecast by about 12 per cent on Tuesday and said a delay in filing its annual report could pose a debt default risk, causing its shares to plunge, the Irish Times reported. The Canadian drugmaker, the target of US investigations into its business and accounting practices, reiterated that it would put off filing its annual report with US regulators but for the first time raised the spectre of a default.

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm was released on bail this morning after issues around the sureties being provided by third parties was resolved to the satisfaction of judge Michael Walsh in the Dublin District Court, the Irish Times reported. Solicitor Aoife Corridon for the defence told Judge Michael Walsh that Mr Drumm’s mother and father-in-law Danny and Georgina O’Farrell had been approved to stand bail. They have lodged €50,000 while the remaining €50,000 has been frozen in their bank account by court order.

Standard & Poor’s cut Mozambique’s credit rating by four steps and warned that a proposed restructuring of about $700 million of bonds issued by a state-owned tuna-fishing company could be “tantamount to default.” The rating was lowered to CC, 10 levels below investment grade, from B-, S&P said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported. Mozambique said on March 9 it wanted to switch holders of $697 million of state-guaranteed notes issued by Empresa Mocambicana de Atum SA, or Ematum, into a new interest-only bond issued by the government maturing in 2023.

Stakeholders have expressed support for a new bill that repeals and re-enacts the 37-year-old Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, Business Day Online reported. The new bill – Bankruptcy and Insolvency (repeal and re-enactment) bill, 2015 – also provides for corporate and individual insolvency to provide for the rehabilitation of the insolvent debtor as well as create the Office of the Supervisor of Insolvency.

Chinese authorities are seeking to crack down on a surge of unregulated lending that is pushing up property prices in the country’s biggest cities, before it wreaks damage to the wider economy, the Financial Times reported. In comments at the weekend Zhou Xiaochuan, head of the People’s Bank of China, denounced loans for down payments on homes as illegal. Pan Gongsheng, a central bank vice-president, said regulators will act against the peer-to-peer companies that grant such loans.

The former chief executive of the bank at the centre of Ireland’s financial collapse appeared in a Dublin court on Monday after being extradited from the US to face charges related to one of the world’s worst banking failures, the Financial Times reported. David Drumm faces 33 charges related to transactions carried out before Anglo Irish Bank collapsed in 2008. His extradition and court appearance are seen as a significant step by the Irish authorities to hold former executives of Anglo to account for its collapse in 2008.

Egypt’s central bank devalued its currency and said it would adopt a more flexible exchange-rate policy as it seeks to ease an acute dollar shortage that is hurting the economy, sending local stocks sharply higher, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Central Bank of Egypt on Monday sold almost $200 million in an interbank auction at 8.85 Egyptian pounds per dollar, compared with the previous rate of 7.73 that it maintained for nearly five months. The move will help narrow the gap between the pound’s exchange rate of about 9.6 to the dollar last week in the black market.

Unconventional monetary policies of central banks in Europe and Japan received an endorsement from the International Monetary Fund yesterday, even as policymakers from emerging markets warned that such policies were increasing risks for the global economy, the Irish Times reported. The debate over the merits of such policies comes days before major central banks such as the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan unveil their interest-rate decisions.

Angola, facing economic and political pressures, has cut spending under its 2016 budget by 20% and is reassuring international investors it can cope with persistently low oil prices, Finance Minister Armando Manuel said Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mr. Manuel said the surprise announcement Friday by President José Eduardo dos Santos to step down in 2018 shouldn’t concern the country’s foreign investors, and is part of “a normal process.” Mr. dos Santos has governed the Atlantic coast nation since 1979 and didn’t lay out a succession plan for the next leader of his party.