Headlines

Russia’s inflation rate has accelerated to levels last seen in 2002, leaving the central bank with a policy conundrum as the economy slides into a recession, The Wall Street Journal reported. Hit by a rapid drop in the price of oil, Russia’s chief export, the country faces an economic and financial crisis similar to the one endured in 2009. But unlike six years ago, the country has been cut off from global capital markets because of Western sanctions imposed after Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.

Tecnotree, a small Finnish firm that offers IT services to telecom operators, on Thursday said it will apply for debt restructuring due to its prolonged financial problems and delayed payments from projects in Latin America. "Significant part of the company's customers operate in countries where central banks restrict the availability of currency, for which reason the payments to the company are delayed," it said in a statement. The company's biggest customer groups are American Movil in Latin America and MTN Group in Africa.

A new Chinese policy plan that promotes a shift to an economy driven by consumers and entrepreneurial vigor also recognizes that the transition from state spending and smokestack industries is years away, The Wall Street Journal reported. The annual budget and policy program, unveiled by the government Thursday, acknowledged China’s entrance to an era of slower growth and outlined the need for new sources of job creation by nurturing innovative small businesses.

Europe’s biggest economy needs people who think small. German business is booming and employment stands at a record high. But the surge is driven mainly by decades-old companies. Startups are scarce and getting rarer. That worries policy makers. In a sign of how seriously the government takes the country’s dearth of entrepreneurialism, left-leaning Social Democrat Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel is pushing to expand tax breaks for startups and trying to ease their path to the stock market. Mr.

Brazil’s currency slid to a 10-year low against the dollar on Wednesday as concerns grew that a corruption scandal at state-run oil group Petrobras engulfing the country’s political elite threatens to scupper the government’s austerity drive, the Financial Times reported. The real fell 2.2 per cent against the dollar to R$2.9947 after the senate leader Renan Calheiros of the PMDB, the main coalition partner of President Dilma Rousseff, blocked an important fiscal measure in congress that is seen as essential to helping reverse Brazil’s growing budget deficit.

Ukraine pledged to remove heavy weapons from conflict-hit eastern areas as public finances ruined by the war made it necessary to start restructuring public debt, Bloomberg News reported. The truce agreed in Minsk last month has largely held, with some shelling by pro-Russian rebels still reported, Ukrainian military officials said Wednesday. Kiev City Council gave the government a mandate to restructure $550 million of its debt as the sovereign prepares to negotiate with bond holders alongside a $17.5 billion International Monetary Fund loan.

In a world of negative interest rates, it certainly pays to be a borrower, Shakespeare’s concerns notwithstanding, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. But such a world is a strange place, especially for a restructuring lawyer. Up is down, and lenders might benefit from defaults. This is something of a theoretical exercise at this point. European sovereign nations have issued debt with negative returns, with Austria being the most recent. Some European corporations have gone negative in the market, but the issuer does not benefit from that.

The Bank of England is facing an unprecedented criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office over emergency lending measures it took at the height of the credit crisis to inject cash into financial markets, The Guardian reported. In late 2007 and early 2008, as the authorities struggled to prevent financial markets from freezing up, banks were invited to bid to borrow funds from the Bank of England, in exchange for collateral, in a series of so-called “auctions”.

A number of current and former media executives will appear before the Oireachtas Banking Inquiry later this month as it continues its investigation into the collapse of the financial sector here in late 2008 and its subsequent rescue by the State, the Irish Times reported. This module of the inquiry will focus on the role of media during the property boom in the lead up to the banking crisis between 2002 and 2007 and any changes in approach after the crisis.

A family-owned strawberry producer that has supplied fresh berries to Coles supermarkets for more than 40 years has collapsed into voluntary administration. Victorian-based Oz Fresh Farms called in administrators Ernst & Young on February 24, with Philip Campbell-Wilson and Adam Nikitins appointed to manage the administration process. Campbell-Wilson told SmartCompany Oz Fresh Farms is still trading and he intends to keep trading the business throughout EY’s appointment.