Headlines

China has set up a fund to bail out trust firms that run into trouble, putting a safety net under a major portion of the country’s fast-growing shadow-banking sector, which has played a big role in financing riskier areas of the economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The creation of the fund was announced by the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the Ministry of Finance on Friday, on the heels of an insurance program that will soon provide protection for bank deposits.
Read more

Weak Ruble Keeps Russians at Home

The ruble’s plunge against the euro and the dollar is upending the lives of many in Russia’s middle class, which in recent years has gotten used to vacations abroad and Western products from gadgets to food, The Wall Street Journal reported. Booming oil prices helped Russia’s middle class grow to 60% of the population in 2010 from 30% a decade earlier, according to the World Bank.
Read more
The results of the Bank of England’s stress tests on banks could make this a decidedly stressful week for executives at some of the more vulnerable institutions, The Scotsman reported. Regulators are keen that all the stress arrives at the same time, and it has been leaked that the central bank has stressed that leaks will not be tolerated. The officially designated stress point is Tuesday morning, and that will make for a frenzied few hours as analysts and investors rush to interpret the results.
Read more
China is adding more cash to its financial system to spur growth, according to people with knowledge of the matter, even as the country’s leadership expresses a willingness to accept a slower economic pace—what President Xi Jinping has called a “new normal,” The Wall Street Journal reported. China’s central bank is pumping about 400 billion yuan (nearly $65 billion) into the country’s banking system, these people said, as it seeks to help Chinese banks lend money to reinvigorate weakening growth.
Read more
The Espirito Santo Group (GES), whose collapse led to a state rescue of Portugal's second-largest bank in August, was a financially fragile "house of cards" for years and its chief knew of irregularities there, a former GES shareholder said, Reuters reported. Pedro Queiroz Pereira, chairman of conglomerate Semapa, told a parliament committee he had ordered a team of experts to scrutinise GES accounts after its chief and the Espirito Santo family patriarch Ricardo Salgado tried to sell debt of GES holding companies to Semapa and even win control of Semapa.
Read more
Lawmakers gave initial approval Thursday to a government program containing the outline for an economic overhaul aimed at stabilizing the country’s finances, as Western backers prepare a new aid package, The Wall Street Journal reported. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk had raised the risk of possible default in calling on parliament to support the measures, although his finance minister played down the likelihood of that scenario.
Read more
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group on Thursday announced measures to ease financial burden on drought-hit farmers in Queensland and New South Wales states, bowing to government pressure to stop farm foreclosures. Federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce issued an ultimatum to the country's major banks, telling them to stop throwing drought-stricken farmers off their properties or risk government intervention, the Australian newspaper reported.
Read more
Greece is again the word in financial markets. For now, though, the crisis vocabulary doesn’t include Ireland, Portugal, Spain or Italy. Greece Crisis 2.0, coming five years after it sent the first shockwaves through Europe, may prove less infectious this time thanks to nations’ improved finances and the backstops provided by euro area politicians and central bankers, Bloomberg News reported.
Read more
A 25-year-old solar energy company has collapsed into voluntary administration, letting go a number of staff, but administrators say proposals on the table to recapitalise the business could offer the company a lifeline. CBD Energy is the latest in a long string of solar companies to fold this year, with commentators labelling the industry a “roller coaster” market. A second meeting of creditors will be held next week on December 19, with Grant Thornton Australia’s Trevor Mark Pogroske and Said Jahani acting as administrators, after being appointed on November 14.
Read more
Iceland’s government signaled this week that it is closing in on a plan that would unfreeze the assets of three failed banks for creditors owed tens of billions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported. At a meeting Tuesday, a government lawyer told some creditors that Iceland would propose a plan early next year to restructure the debt of Kaupthing Bank hf, Glitnir Bank hf and Landsbanki, according to people familiar with the talks.
Read more