Headlines

Only 15 percent of the 267 insolvency cases admitted in company law tribunals during October-December 2022 reached resolution with overall recovery of just 27 per cent of claimed amount, the IBBI data showed, the Economic Times of India reported. As much as 45 per cent cases were concluded through liquidation, according to a Kotak Securities analysis of the latest data from the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI).

Sight deposits held by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) jumped last week, data showed on Monday, suggesting that both Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) and UBS (UBSG.S) may have taken big chunks of emergency liquidity to secure their merger, Reuters reported. Sight deposits - cash held by the SNB for commercial banks overnight - jumped to 567 billion Swiss francs ($619 billion) from 515 billion francs a week earlier.

The Swiss government was compelled to intervene to save Credit Suisse Group AG as the troubled bank wouldn’t have survived another day of trading amid a crisis of investor confidence, Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter said, Bloomberg News reported. “CS would not have survived Monday,” Keller-Sutter said in an interview with Zurich newspaper NZZ.

For a bank, a loss of confidence is a fatal blow. After that occurred at several banks in the United States and Switzerland in the past few weeks, policymakers in the eurozone have been trying to shore up confidence in the region’s banking sector, the New York Times reported. At a conference in Frankfurt last week, representatives from the European Central Bank spoke confidently of the strength of the financial regulations and the intensity of the banking oversight in the 20-country bloc that uses the euro currency.

The head of Australia's prudential regulator said on Tuesday the country's banks were among the best placed in the world to handle a financial crisis, following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) that roiled international markets, Reuters reported.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni’s government is preparing a new package worth €4.9 billion ($5.3 billion) that extends support to low-income families while weaning others off aid, Bloomberg News reported. The money won’t require extra deficit spending by tapping a €21 billion reserve already set aside in the budget, as well as reaping the benefit of higher-than-expected economic growth, said the people, who declined to be named as discussions over the bill are ongoing.

The management team at Brazilian retailer Americanas SA told its external auditor and internal auditing committee as late as December 2022 that there were no supply-chain financing operations taking place at the firm, Bloomberg News reported. At the same time, executives gave the securities regulator CVM conflicting information, and a central bank system showed the account registering supply chain financing at the firm had ballooned to almost 17 billion reais ($3.2 billion).

The head of the International Monetary Fund called for greater vigilance over the global financial system during a speech in China on Sunday in which she also pointed to “green shoots” emerging in the world’s second-largest economy, CNN.com reported. “Risks to financial stability have increased,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said during remarks at the China Development Forum in Beijing. Georgieva lauded how policy-makers had acted swiftly in response to the banking crisis, citing the recent collaboration by major central banks to boost the flow of US dollars around the world.

Average potential global economic growth will slump to a three-decade low of 2.2% per year through 2030, ushering in a "lost decade" for the world's economy, unless policymakers adopt ambitious initiatives to boost labor supply, productivity and investment, the World Bank warned on Monday, Reuters reported. Failure to reverse the expected broad-based slowdown in potential gross domestic product (GDP) growth would have profound implications for the world’s ability to tackle climate change and reduce poverty, it said in a new report.

Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun is attempting to revive the fortunes of digital-assets exchange Huobi by shifting its focus back to China—with the aid of a digital citizenship program from a tiny Caribbean island, the Wall Street Journal reported. Sun is pushing the Beijing-founded company to win customers in Hong Kong and China, despite a ban on crypto trading in the mainland that forced Huobi to stop accepting business from there.