Headlines

The European Court of Auditors has strongly criticised the European Commission’s handling of the Irish bailout, highlighting its failure to notice warning-signs in the run-up to the financial crisis, the Irish Times reported. In a hard-hitting report published this morning, the EU spending watchdog also pointed to the absence of key documentation relating to bailout decisions, noting that certain documents are still missing.

Bank of Portugal Governor Carlos Costa urged the EU on Monday to rapidly beef up the European bank resolution fund for winding up failed banks and resolve the "schizophrenia" between the responsibilities of European and national authorities, Reuters reported. Under the European Union's banking union project, all large euro zone banks are now under a single supervisor, the European Central Bank, and a common method of dealing with troubled banks has been put in place, including a joint fund, paid into by banks themselves, to cover the costs.

Years of rapid economic growth across sub-Saharan Africa fueled hopes of a prosperous new era, the International New York Times reported. To many, the world’s poorest continent was finally emerging, with economies that were no longer dependent on the fickle global demand for Africa’s raw resources. But as China’s economy slows and its once seemingly insatiable hunger for Africa’s commodities wanes, many African economies are tumbling, quickly.

If any world leader has surfed the wave of the oil boom, it is Ilham Aliyev, the Financial Times reported. In 2003, just as oil prices began to soar, Mr Aliyev succeeded his father as president of Azerbaijan. Over the next decade he presided over an era of rising prosperity that transformed Baku into a kind of Dubai on the Caspian and imbued the country with the newfound confidence to project itself on the world stage. But Azerbaijan’s oil boom has come to a juddering halt.

Russia’s economy shrank 3.7 per cent in 2015, the worst drop since the depths of the global financial crisis, as the country struggled with a drop in the price of its oil exports and international sanctions, the state statistics service said Monday, The Globe and Mail reported. The decline is the sharpest for Russia since 2009, when the world economy was suffering from the effects of a credit crunch and financial crisis. It matched the most recent prediction from the IMF, which forecasts another fall of 1 per cent in 2016 before a return to 1 per cent growth next year.

A Calgary-based oilfield services company with 112 employees at six locations as of the end of 2014 has been placed in receivership, an apparent victim of the current drilling downturn prompted by low oil and gas prices, The Calgary Herald reported. Great Prairie Energy Services Inc. announced late Friday that Grant Thornton Ltd. had been appointed receiver by the Court of Queen’s Bench and that all of its directors and officers had resigned.

Chinese officials readily admit that communication has not been their strong point when it comes to dealing with international investors, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. The question of how China manages the renminbi is critical for global trade and commodity prices; the market turmoil following recent changes in the currency regime was exacerbated by Beijing’s failure to explain its intentions. Policymakers have now made it explicit that they have no wish to engineer a big devaluation.

The European Court of Auditors has strongly criticised the European Commission’s handling of the Irish bailout, highlighting its failure to notice warning-signs in the run-up to the financial crisis, the Irish Times reported. In a hard-hitting report published this morning, the EU spending watchdog also pointed to the absence of key documentation relating to bailout decisions, noting that certain documents are still missing.

Russian state defence company Rostec will provide additional capital to its subsidiary bank Novikombank due to revaluation of loans to companies that fell under Western sanctions, according to a Rostec statement, Reuters reported.

Venezuela’s opposition-controlled congress on Friday rejected an economic emergency decree proposed by President Nicolás Maduro to confront the deepest recession in the country’s history, the first time the body has moved against the government in 17 years of populist rule, The Wall Street Journal reported. The opposition legislators said that Mr. Maduro’s decree was vague and was designed to put more power into his hands without addressing Venezuela’s calamitous economy, which the International Monetary Fund says will contract by 8% this year.