Headlines
Resources Per Region
In Shenzhen, a metropolis born of China’s economic prosperity, Paibang Village is a reminder of the city’s modest past and the challenges ahead for reviving the country’s property sector. Paibang is what China calls an urban village, a labyrinth of low-slung apartment buildings and mom-and-pop storefronts connected by a maze of alleyways and narrow roads. There are hundreds of them in Shenzhen, a municipality of 18 million people next to Hong Kong, and thousands of such villages across China.
Read more
Swedish landlord SBB’s offer to buy back some of its bonds at steep discounts may be tantamount to a default, according to a statement from S&P Global Ratings, Bloomberg News reported. The ratings agency placed Samhallsbyggnadsbolaget i Norden AB, as it is otherwise known, on watch for a possible downgrade to selective default in a statement Friday. S&P said it would be able to assess further once the final results of the buyback were published.
Read more
Three Bank of England policy makers warned markets to brace for UK interest rates to remain elevated for a lengthy period of time, the latest efforts by officials to dampen bets on a reduction in borrowing costs by mid-2024, Bloomberg News reported. Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden said firms must adapt to a higher rate world after the shift away from the low borrowing costs that marked the post-global financial crisis period.
Read more
Monetary policy in Canada wouldn’t be as restrictive if elected officials had restrained their spending in recent years, according to economists at the Bank of Nova Scotia, Bloomberg News reported. Roughly 200 basis points of interest rate tightening stems from the combined program spending and consumption by Canada’s federal and provincial governments since the pandemic, Scotiabank economists Jean-François Perrault and Rene Lalonde wrote in a report to investors.
Read more
Israel's jobless rate surged to near 10% in October, the Central Bureau of Statistics said on Monday, after the outbreak of war with Palestinian Hamas militants led to tens of thousands of displaced citizens who had lived near the Gaza border, Reuters reported. The main unemployment rate held steady at 3.4% last month. But when taking into account what is expected to be a temporary loss of work, the rate reached 9.6% in October as 428,400 people were jobless versus 163,600 in September, prior to the Oct. 7 attack when Hamas gunmen rampaged though Israeli border towns.
Read more
Germany's lower house of parliament on Friday passed the Financing for the Future Act, to promote start-ups and improve access to capital markets, Reuters reported. The objective of this law is to make Germany more attractive for entrepreneurs and to help drive the economy of Europe's industrial powerhouse. In the future, companies will be allowed to go public with a minimum market capitalization of one million euros instead of the previous 1.25 million. In addition, an underwriter such as a bank is no longer required.
The Norwegian Competition Authority is moving to block Norwegian Air’s plan to buy regional airline Widerøe, in the latest sign that European regulators are taking a tougher stance against the latest wave of airline mergers, Airline Weekly reported. The regulator highlighted the reduction in competition to two airlines from three on many domestic routes in the country amid reasons for its objections to the 1.13 billion Norwegian kroner ($104 million) deal.
Italy is no longer in danger of a cut to junk at Moody’s Investors Service, which raised its rating outlook to stable in a huge win for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Bloomberg News reported. The country’s assessment was kept at Baa3, the lowest investment grade, but the company removed the threat of a downgrade after more than 15 months with a negative view instituted just before the populist premier won power.
An accounting scandal that engulfed Americanas SA last year was deeper than the Brazilian retailer previously reported, according to long-delayed financial reports it released Thursday, Bloomberg News reported. Americanas said the size of the fraud was 25.2 billion reais ($5.2 billion) as of the end of the end of last year — about 5 billion reais more than it previously estimated. The accounting issues stemmed from supply chain financing and false advertising contracts.
Read more