Headlines

Business activity in Wales has shown mixed trends, with both rising insolvency-related activity and a growing number of start-ups, the South Wales Argus reported. According to R3, the trade body for restructuring and insolvency professionals, the region saw a 2.3 per cent increase in insolvency-related activity in 2025, rising from 844 cases in 2024 to 863 last year. At the same time, the number of new businesses grew by 8.7 per cent, from 21,036 to 22,863.

The UK’s tax office is seeking to block Waldorf Production from restructuring its liabilities in a London court, as the nation’s fiscal body takes an increasingly aggressive stance when it comes to debt collecting, Bloomberg News reported. The struggling oil and gas company owes His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs an estimated $72.4 million, court documents seen by Bloomberg show.

The European Central Bank has kept interest rates unchanged, saying inflation is on track to return to its 2% target even as global trade tensions and geopolitical risks cloud the outlook, EuroNews.com reported. The Governing Council said on Thursday that it would leave its three key rates steady, with the deposit facility at 2.00%, the main refinancing rate at 2.15% and the marginal lending rate at 2.40%. The ECB said their latest assessment confirmed that inflation should stabilise at target over the medium term.

The Bank of England has held interest rates at 3.75% after a knife-edge vote but has opened the door to cuts later this year, BBC.com reported. Borrowing costs were widely expected to be unchanged after the Bank reduced them from 4% in December. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey reiterated his forecast that inflation – which measures the pace of price growth - would fall close to the Bank's 2% target from April onwards, against a previous expectation it would hit that level in 2027. "That's good news," said Bailey. "We need to make sure that inflation stays there.

The 2025 financial debt of Mexico's state-owned oil firm Pemex, closed at $84.5 billion, the company's CEO Victor Rodriguez Padilla said on Wednesday during the daily morning press conference of Mexico's president Claudia Sheinbaum, Reuters reported. Pemex's financial debt at the end of 2024 was of $97.6 billion. 2025 marks the fifth consecutive year that the state-owned firm saw a decrease in its financial debt, Rodriguez said. Read more.

German manufacturing orders unexpectedly jumped in December, a sign that the recent struggles of the country’s industrial sector might be fading as Berlin’s fiscal stimulus ramps up, the Wall Street Journal reported. Orders climbed 7.8% on month, the strongest pickup in two years, accelerating from the 5.7% rise in November, statistics agency Destatis said on Thursday. Factory orders have now climbed for four straight months. Orders were 9.5% higher in the final quarter of last year than in the third, Destatis said.

Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino said on Thursday that the concession of contracts to operate two ports held and operated for nearly three decades by Hong Kong's CK Hutchison Holdings will "never again" be issued to a single company, Reuters reported. Panama's Supreme Court last week nullified CK Hutchison's contract to operate two ports along its strategic canal through its Panama Ports Company subsidiary, ruling that the contracts violated the Central American nation's constitution by giving the company exclusive privileges and tax exemptions.

Ireland’s jobless rate was 4.7 per cent in January, unchanged from the previous month, but up from 4.5 per cent in January 2025, the Irish Times reported. Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures indicated the seasonally adjusted number of people unemployed in January was 138,400, compared with 137,800 in December 2025. The January total represented an annual increase of 8,600.

In China’s northeastern grain belt, farmers are getting a windfall from the government: more subsidies to grow soybeans, part of an estimated $1 trillion national effort to declare economic independence from the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reported. More than 7,500 miles away, in Milwaukee, the industrial-parts manufacturer Husco is scrambling to use fewer Chinese-made components in its U.S. factories, as the Trump administration wields tariffs to reduce imports and try to resurrect American manufacturing.

India is talking to cryptocurrency exchanges to assess evolving trading activity as it ​seeks oversight over newer crypto products, according to a ‌top tax official, Reuters reported. India does not regulate cryptocurrencies, but global crypto exchanges such ‌as Binance, Coin DCX, Coinbase and Zebpay operate in the country after registering with a government agency. Asia's third-largest economy has imposed punitive taxes on gains from cryptocurrencies and the local central bank ⁠has repeatedly cautioned against ‌the risks from crypto trading.