Headlines

Canada’s Groupe Mach Inc. is acquiring residential properties with close to 2,000 units as part of a deal that will see it take over $415 million of mortgages from a crumbling real estate entity, Bloomberg News reported. The buildings were part of Groupe Huot, a Quebec-based diversified company that faced a liquidity crisis because of rising interest rates this year and saw a number of its businesses placed into a bankruptcy process.

Credit rating agency Moody’s cut its outlook for Chinese sovereign bonds to negative on Tuesday, citing risks from a slowing economy and a crisis in its property sector, the Associated Press reported. Moody’s said that the downgrade, its first for China since 2017, reflects risks from financing troubles of local and regional governments and state-owned enterprises. The world’s second-biggest economy had been slowing before a 2020 crackdown on excessive borrowing brought on defaults by dozens of property developers.

China Evergrande Group’s chief agitator calling for its liquidation is suddenly backpedaling, but the line of creditors who may take up the torch doesn’t end there, Bloomberg News reported. In Hong Kong’s insolvency system, liquidation lawsuits often start with a creditor’s petition. Top Shine Global Limited of Intershore Consult (Samoa) Ltd., one of Evergrande’s creditors, took up the petitioner’s role, only to surprisingly demur at what was assumed to be a final liquidation hearing Monday.

In January, more than 100 financial sleuths were dispatched to the Guangzhou headquarters of China Evergrande Group, a real estate giant that had defaulted a year earlier under $300 billion of debt. Its longtime auditor had just resigned, and a nation of home buyers had directed its ire at Evergrande, the New York Times reported. Police on watch for protesters stood guard outside the building, and the new team of auditors were issued permits to get in.

Another European Central Bank hike in borrowing costs probably won’t happen in light of last week’s consumer-price data, according to Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel, Bloomberg News reported. “The most recent inflation number has made a further rate increase rather unlikely,” she said in an interview with Reuters that was transcribed on the ECB’s website. The typically hawkish ECB official spoke days after a report showed euro-area consumer-price growth slowed to 2.4%, far less than economists had anticipated.

Brazil's economy avoided contraction in the third quarter, extending a run of better-than-expected growth, even as it slowed sharply due to falling investment and the fading impact of a robust harvest to start the year, Reuters reported. Latin America's largest economy grew by a seasonally adjusted 0.1% in the three months through September, government statistics agency IBGE said on Tuesday. Economists had forecast a 0.2% drop in a Reuters poll.

The Turkish Central Bank's total reserves have jumped to a record level exceeding $140 billion, five bankers' calculations showed on Tuesday, sustaining an uptrend after it adopted more orthodox policies following May elections, Reuters reported. The rising reserves, alongside 3,150 basis points in interest rate hikes since June, have marked a departure from years of unorthodox and at times erratic policymaking - and some foreign investors are taking note. Including the latest rise of $3.5-3.8 billion in the week to Dec.

Brazil's central bank chief, Roberto Campos Neto, said on Monday that the bank successfully overcame some challenges to its autonomy posed by the new administration of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, despite what he termed some "noises" in the past year, Reuters reported. Speaking at an institutional event, he said the central bank managed to maintain decisions based on technical guidelines throughout this new government in which, for the first time, the new executive branch had to coexist with a central bank chief chosen by the previous administration.

Australia’s central bank kept interest rates unchanged at its final meeting of the year on Tuesday as cooling inflation and a softening labor market suggest its policy tightening to date is gaining traction, Bloomberg News reported. Markets showed disappointment at the neutral tone of the post-meeting statement, sending the currency and government bond yields lower after the Reserve Bank held its cash rate at a 12-year high of 4.35%, as anticipated. “Higher interest rates are working to establish a more sustainable balance between aggregate supply and demand,” Governor Michele Bullock said.

South Korea’s consumer inflation cooled more than expected in November, offering central bank authorities latitude to moderate their hawkish policy tilt going into next year, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices rose 3.3% from a year earlier, decelerating from 3.8% growth in October, the statistics office reported Tuesday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting inflation to slow to 3.5%. The slowdown comes as oil price gains moderate while demand for agricultural products cools in the wake of the Chuseok holiday period.