Headlines

More Dutch business owners are seeking help for financial problems despite the relatively low level of bankruptcy, Dutch News reported. The Dutch tax office has referred 1,465 companies this year to Over Rood, a volunteer-run organisation that helps companies in difficulty. In 2020, when the government bankrolled businesses that were unable to trade during lockdown, the number dropped to 607. The figure is relatively low despite the Netherlands being in recession, with the economy contracting in each of the first three quarters of 2023.

Sri Lanka said on Wednesday that it has reached an agreement in principle with a group of creditors including India and Japan on debt restructuring, a crucial move toward unlocking a second instalment of a $2.9 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund, the Associated Press reported. The agreement with the Official Creditor Committee covers approximately $5.9 billion of outstanding public debt and consists of a mix of long-term maturity extension and reduction in interest rates, a statement from the country's Finance Ministry said.

German inflation eased more than expected in November, falling to its lowest level since June 2021 due to a decline in energy prices, data from the federal statistics office showed on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The inflation rate fell to 2.3% in November. German consumer prices, harmonised to compare with other European Union countries, had risen by 3.0% year-on-year in October. A 4.5% year-on-year drop in energy prices had a particularly dampening effect on inflation in November, the statistics office said, a so-called base effect due to the very high cost of energy in November 2022.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged lawmakers on Tuesday to override Germany’s borrowing limits for a fourth consecutive year, allowing his government to take on billions of euros in fresh debt to modernize his country’s economy despite a budget crisis triggered by a constitutional court ruling, the New York Times reported. “It would be a grave, unforgivable mistake to neglect the modernization of our country in the face of all these acute challenges,” Mr. Scholz told Parliament, citing persistently high energy prices and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Spanish inflation unexpectedly eased, retreating for the first time since June thanks to drops in the costs of fuel and tourism, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices rose 3.2% from a year earlier in November, data Wednesday showed. That compares with 3.5% the previous month and defied the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists for an acceleration to 3.7%. A gauge of underlying pressures that excludes energy and fresh food fell to 4.5%, easing much more than anticipated.

Digital bank robberies and other cyber hacks will be a key risk for countries launching digital versions of their currencies, a new report from the Bank for International Settlements has warned, Reuters reported. The BIS, dubbed the central bankers' central bank, has been overseeing much of the global development work on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and its report is its most comprehensive assessment yet of the challenges.

Binance Holdings Ltd.’s attempt to turn the page on costly regulatory violations faces a test in Thailand, where the world’s largest crypto exchange will soon start a new trading venue with one of Asia’s richest men, Bloomberg News reported. The venture with Sarath Ratanavadi’s Gulf Energy Development Pcl recently received the required licenses, but Binance’s guilty plea last week and $4.3 billion in penalties for US anti-money laundering and sanctions contraventions have cast a shadow over the planned domestic digital-asset platform.

Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimated Wednesday that international growth would slow to 2.7% in 2024 from an expected 2.9% pace this year, the Associated Press reported. That would amount to the slowest calendar-year growth since the pandemic year of 2020. Despite the gloomier outlook, the organization is “projecting that recessions will be avoided almost everywhere,” OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said at a news conference.

The cost of shipping fuels such as diesel across the Atlantic has soared to an almost 16-month high amid ongoing disruption at the Panama Canal, Bloomberg News reported. Shipping through the vital waterway — a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans — has suffered as an El Nino-fueled drought reduced water levels to an unprecedented low. That’s prompting shipping companies to pay large sums to jump ahead in queues or sail thousands of extra miles around South America.

In Courtroom No. 29, a gray, musty cubbyhole of a space wedged into the heart of Hong Kong’s tony banking district, Judge Linda Chan presides over China’s great financial reckoning, Bloomberg News reported. One after the other, the high-powered attorneys and executives of distressed real-estate developers — the behemoths that had once powered the economic boom that made China the envy of the world — come before her to plead for their financial lives: China Evergrande Group, Sunac China Holdings, Jiayuan International Group, Kaisa Group Holdings.