Headlines

Australian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes on Thursday stood by the economics of a plan to ship energy from a giant solar farm in the country's north to Singapore via undersea cable as he took possession of the A$20 billion ($12.73 billion) project, Reuters reported. Cannon-Brookes, the co-founder of tech firm Atlassian turned environmental activist, said he continued to believe outside investors would be drawn to the Sun Cable project, adding it already had demand for more energy than it could produce.

Global securities regulators set out on Thursday their first blueprint to make participants in "decentralised finance" (DeFi)accountable for their actions and safeguard market stability, Reuters reported. DeFi platforms allow users to lend, borrow and save in digital assets, using the blockchain technology that underpins cryptoassets to bypass the traditional gatekeepers of finance such as banks and exchanges.

Creditors of Country Garden Holdings are doubtful the Chinese developer will be in a position to service debt that will come due later this year without liquidity support, after it averted a catastrophic default this week at the last minute, Reuters reported. With its financial situation precarious and prospects of China's property sector remaining grim, the offshore creditors expect the country's largest private developer to get liquidity support soon or for it to undergo a debt revamp.

China’s exports to the rest of the world dropped for a fourth straight month in August, bringing little relief to the country from a deepening economic malaise and weighing on the global trade outlook, the Wall Street Journal reported. China has struggled to sustain a wave of overseas demand for Chinese-made goods that carried it through much of the three years of the pandemic, particularly as Western consumers tilted their spending back toward services and away from smartphones, furniture and other goods. Higher borrowing rates in the U.S.

Direct lending, a key but expensive source of credit for riskier European firms that banks often shy away from, is running out of steam, a fresh sign that aggressive interest rate rises may be starting to cause funding stress and exacerbate economic pain, Reuters reported. Fundraising and deal-making have dropped sharply at European private debt funds, new data shows.

Germany’s embattled economy, once Europe’s main engine of growth, looks set for a fresh contraction as its all-important manufacturing sector continues to weaken, the Wall Street Journal reported. After stagnating since the end of last year, Germany’s output is likely to contract this quarter as its factories face higher energy costs, a less welcoming global marketplace and intense competition from China in key sectors, recent data shows. The country was hit hard by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused a surge in energy and food prices.

The governor of Poland's central bank said Thursday that its large interest rate cut was justified despite high inflation because prices are stabilizing and the era of high inflation is ending, the Associated Press reported. Adam Glapinski spoke a day after the bank's monetary council announced that it was cutting interest rates by 75 basis points, a much larger reduction than had been expected.

The Bank of Canada held its main interest rate steady at 5% after back-to-back rate rises in June and July, saying the economy has shifted into a weaker phase and labor-market pressures have eased, the Wall Street Journal reported. Nevertheless, the central bank Wednesday said it remained concerned “about the persistence of underlying inflationary pressures,” and is prepared to raise rates again should conditions not improve. Along with the U.S.

Mexico’s annual inflation eased roughly in line with expectations in August, as the central bank says it’s not yet ready to discuss lowering record high borrowing costs given the “complex and uncertain” global outlook, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices rose 4.64% from the same month a year earlier, down from 4.79% in July, the national statistics institute reported Thursday.

The Reserve Bank of India has been frequently intervening in the non-deliverable forward (NDF) market to make sure that the rupee does not drop to a record low, four bankers told Reuters on Thursday. The rupee was at 83.1525 to the U.S. dollar as of 11:16 a.m. IST, not too far from its record low of 83.29 hit in October 2022. The currency has largely avoided the decline in its Asian peers. "The RBI intervened on NDF in the morning (before local over-the-counter, OTC, markets opened) and it did the same yesterday," the head of treasury at a private sector bank said.