Headlines

U.K. shoppers turned away from retail outlets last month, after highs in May, amid election jitters and poor weather, the Wall Street Journal reported. Retail sales volumes declined 1.2% on month in June, undoing some of the 2.9% rise in May, according to the Office for National Statistics. The data comes after consumer-confidence figures showed only a marginal improvement on month in July, as British people showed caution about how the new U.K. government would affect the economy and their finances.

ION Group completed the acquisition of Italian asset manager Prelios SpA for €1.35 billion ($1.5 billion), following months of back-and-forth with Italian authorities on the deal, Bloomberg News reported. The acquisition, done through a unit called X3 Group, was financed by a group of banks led by UniCredit SpA, Intesa Sanpaolo SpA and BNP Paribas SA, ION said in a statement Friday. “The deal is part of a broader strategy to improve asset management and efficient decision-making processes through the use of data,” Prelios Chairman Fabrizio Palenzona said in the statement.

Egypt kept interest rates at an all-time high for a second consecutive meeting, looking to ensure a slowdown in inflation continues after a dramatic currency devaluation, Bloomberg News reported. The central bank maintained the benchmark deposit rate at 27.25% and the lending rate at 28.25%, its Monetary Policy Committee said Thursday in a statement. “The Committee judges that the current monetary stance is appropriate to support the sustained moderation of inflation, and will continue to assess its transmission to the economy in a data-driven manner,” it said in the statement.

Ethiopia’s official creditors have granted financing assurances to the country to help fast-track approval of a new loan by the International Monetary Fund’s executive board, Bloomberg News reported. Members of an official creditor committee held a meeting last week to approve the financing assurances, according to two of the people, who asked not to be named because the talks are private. Financing assurances mean that bilateral creditors such as the Paris Club and China provided certainty that they will restructure their loans to Ethiopia in a way that’s consistent with the fund’s program.

Zambia’s proposed ban on charging foreign currency in local transactions — punishable with 10-year jail terms — might defeat its own purpose, according to the International Monetary Fund, Bloomberg News reported. The central bank of Africa’s second-biggest copper producer in June unveiled the plans to curb increasing dollarization in the economy that it said blunts its tools to fight inflation. Businesses have already pushed-back on proposed regulations calling them “punitive” and warning that they may actually fuel price growth.

EU tariffs on electric vehicles built in China breach global trading rules and must be corrected, an industry body representing 12 Chinese automakers told the European Commission in a hearing this week, Reuters reported. The China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products (CCCME) presented its view at a hearing on Thursday that the EU's preliminary assessment is incompatible with EU and World Trade Organization rules. "We are very concerned.

Britain added 11 new shipping sanctions under its Russia sanctions regime related to the war in Ukraine, an official notice showed on Thursday, SwissInfo.ch reported. The government said the sanctions on ships including Zaliv Amurskiy and SCF Pechora relate to the carrying of oil or oil products from Russia to a third country. The ships are believed to have the flags of Panama, Gabon and the Cook Islands, the government notice said.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and several hundred other top Communist Party officials huddled in Beijing this week to plot a path forward for their country’s sagging economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The outline they released after four days of meetings suggests a future that looks more or less like the present. That fidelity to China’s current course signals that Xi remains committed to his vision of state-led development, even as unease festers—among ordinary Chinese and foreign investors—over his stewardship of the world’s second-largest economy.

The European Central Bank left interest rates unchanged after last month’s landmark cut — giving away little on its plans as investors and economists bet on another move in September, Bloomberg News reported. The deposit rate was kept at 3.75% on Thursday — as all 55 economists in a Bloomberg survey predicted. The ECB reiterated that borrowing costs will remain “sufficiently restrictive for as long as necessary” to ensure inflation returns to 2%.

President Christine Lagarde said the European Central Bank’s next interest-rate meeting is “wide open” — hinting that another cut is possible as officials will have significantly more information on inflation by then, Bloomberg News reported. “The question of September and what we do in September is wide open and will be determined on the basis of all the data that we will be receiving,” Lagarde said Thursday after the ECB kept its deposit rate at 3.75%.