Headlines

Pressure is building on Beijing to intervene more forcefully to restore confidence in its reeling property market, the Wall Street Journal reported. In the latest sign of stress for the market, people with knowledge of Beijing’s decision-making said authorities are investigating whether Hui Ka Yan, the billionaire founder of heavily indebted property developer China Evergrande Group, attempted to transfer assets offshore while the company was struggling to complete unfinished projects.

The number of businesses becoming insolvent has surged by a third in the first nine months of the year but remains below pre-Covid levels, the Irish Independent reported. Insolvency levels rose by 33pc in the first three quarters of 2023 compared to the same period last year, according to PwC’s latest Insolvency Barometer. The retail and construction sectors account for the highest number of business failures, but the failure rate is highest in the arts, entertainment and hospitality sector, according to Ken Tyrrell, business recovery partner, PwC Ireland.

British finance minister Jeremy Hunt set out plans on Monday to freeze and then cut the number of government workers to save up to 1 billion pounds ($1.2 billion), an attempt to appease some in his own Conservative Party noisily demanding tax cuts, Reuters reported. While admitting "the level of tax is too high", Hunt sought at the governing party's annual conference to turn attention towards efforts to boost public sector productivity in Britain, saying that was the way to reduce ballooning public spending.

Brazil’s Senate approved legislation to limit the growth of credit card debt to 100% of its original amount, an attempt to cap interest rates that currently average nearly 450%, Bloomberg News reported. Lawmakers passed the bill by acclamation Monday, a day before the expiration of a provisional measure that included the cap. The lower house of congress approved the bill in September, meaning it is now on track to become law. Once it is enacted, credit card issuers will have 90 days to submit their own regulatory proposal that will need authorization from Brazil’s national monetary council.

Current home prices in Canada can’t be justified if medium-term interest rates stay elevated, a former Bank of Canada official said, underscoring the risk to one of the country’s most important sectors, Bloomberg News reported. Paul Beaudry, who spent four years on the central bank’s rate-setting committee, said the outlook for the housing market remains highly dependent not only on the policy rate, but on longer-term fixed rates. If they don’t come down, “then it becomes much more difficult to support these valuations,” he said on BNN Bloomberg Television.

Bank of England rate-setter Catherine Mann warned against letting up in the fight against inflation as she disparaged the central bank’s forecasts and predicted permanently higher interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Mann, who is seen as the most hawkish rate-setter on the Monetary Policy Committee, said that interest rates have only just reached restrictive territory after the BOE halted its hiking cycle last month.

A Kenyan parliamentary panel called on the country's information technology regulator on Monday to shut down the operations of cryptocurrency project Worldcoin within the country until more stringent regulations are put in place, Reuters reported. The government suspended the project in early August following privacy objections over its scanning of users' irises in exchange for a digital ID to create a new "identity and financial network". Worldcoin was rolled out in various countries around the world by Tools for Humanity, a company co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Chile’s economic activity posted its biggest monthly drop since May as services declined, pushing one of Latin America’s richest nations toward recession and paving the way for more big interest rate cuts, Bloomberg News reported. The Imacec index, a proxy for gross domestic product, fell 0.5% in August from July, compared to the median estimate for a 0.2% gain from analysts in a Bloomberg survey. It matched the 0.5% decline recorded in May. From a year prior, the index dropped 0.9%, the central bank reported on Monday.

The chair of the board of Alecta, Sweden's largest pension fund provider, resigned on Monday following months of questions over the company's loss-making investments in U.S. banks and a Swedish property group, Reuters reported. Alecta, the subject of two ongoing probes by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) over risk taking, said in a statement its deputy board chair, Jan-Olof Jacke, will lead the board until a permanent candidate is elected. "In a situation where there has been too much focus on my person, I have decided to resign," Ingrid Bonde said in a statement.

Ukraine's central bank said it would bring in a more flexible exchange rate from Tuesday, relaxing the official peg it has had throughout the war with Russia in a move to boost the economy, Reuters reported. Central Bank Governor Andriy Pyshnyi said financial stability in Ukraine had climbed to a "historic maximum", allowing the central bank to start easing wartime restrictions in a bid to help the economy and businesses. "Compared with July last year, the situation is radically different," Pyshnyi told an online media briefing.