Headlines

China's central bank will seek to "enrich" its monetary policy toolbox and will gradually increase buying and selling of treasury bonds in its open market operations, its second-quarter monetary policy implementation report said on Friday, Reuters reported.

China’s consumer inflation rose more than expected last month but the data didn’t paint a strong enough picture to dispel concerns about weak demand in the world’s second-largest economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The country’s consumer-price index rose for a sixth consecutive month in July, ticking up 0.5% from a year earlier and marking a five-month high, the National Bureau of Statistics said Friday. One-off factors like weather disruptions to food supply pushed up prices, plumping up the headline reading, economists say.

Postmedia’s $1-million bid to acquire Atlantic Canada’s largest newspaper chain will not be held up by the main union that represents workers at SaltWire Network Inc. and The Halifax Herald Ltd., the Canadian Press reported. A lawyer representing the court-appointed monitor overseeing insolvency proceedings for SaltWire and the The Halifax Herald confirmed that the Canadian arm of the Communications Workers of America has agreed to certain conditions demanded last week by Toronto-based Postmedia.

Mexico's central bank lowered its benchmark interest rate in a divided vote to 10.75%, the monetary authority said on Thursday, cutting the key borrowing rate from 11.00% but also signaling that it expects prices to rise higher than previously expected, Reuters reported. Three members of the bank's board voted to lower the rate by 25 basis points, while two others sought to hold it steady, according to a statement announcing the decision. In its statement, the bank noted it expects inflationary pressures in Latin America's No.

Ethiopia caught its bondholders off-guard with a proposal to introduce a 20% haircut in the nation’s debt-restructuring process, setting the scene for tense negotiations, Bloomberg News reported. The government’s suggestion to reduce the value of $1 billion eurobonds due in December contrasts with proposals creditors exchanged with Ethiopia last year, which would have seen them receive the principal in full, but over a longer period and at lower interest rates, according to Kevin Daly, emerging markets investment director at Abrdn Investment Management Ltd.

Former Mozambican Finance Minister Manuel Chang was convicted Thursday in a financial conspiracy case that welled up from from his country's “ tuna bond ” scandal and swept into a U.S. court, the Associated Press reported. A federal jury in New York delivered the verdict. Chang was accused of accepting payoffs to put his African nation secretly on the hook for big loans to government-controlled companies for tuna fishing ships and other maritime projects.

Canada’s labor-relations board again opened the door to a possible work stoppage at the country’s two big rail operators after determining a strike or lockout doesn’t pose an immediate or serious danger to safety or public health, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Canada Industrial Relations Board, in a decision Friday, ordered a 13-day cooling-off period between the freight railroads—Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National Railway—and Teamsters Canada Rail Conference.

A China Evergrande Group unit in mainland China has become the target of a liquidation petition, as creditors step up efforts to recover assets from the fallen property giant, Bloomberg News reported. The petition was filed against Guangzhou Kailong Real Estate by Guangdong Vanward New Electric Co. to a court in southern Guangzhou city, according to a Shenzhen stock exchange filing late Wednesday. Fully owned by Evergrande, Kailong has a stake of around 60% in Hengda Real Estate, which is the developer’s main property operation onshore, an exchange filing shows.

Chinese regulators have asked some money management firms to report the duration of any new bond fund products, in the latest effort to curb risks in the market, Bloomberg News reported. The China Securities Regulatory Commission has also significantly slowed down the approval process for new bond funds and asked some fund companies to document their existing bond fund durations. A rally in Chinese government bonds is raising concerns from regulators that banks and investment funds are exposing themselves to excessive risk if the market turns.

A U.S. judge refused to block a debt payment designed to free Byju’s from an insolvency case in India, telling American lenders to take their complaints about the transaction to a court in the home country of the educational tech firm, Bloomberg News reported. Bankruptcy Judge Brendan Shannon rejected a lender request to block Riju Ravindran, brother of Byju’s founder, from paying more than $19 million to India’s governing board for cricket. A deal to clear the debt enabled Byju’s to win dismissal of an insolvency case in front of a judicial tribunal in India.