Headlines

China has taken another step to limit domestic investors’ exposure to offshore debt issued by local government financing vehicles, Bloomberg News reported. The National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors, the country’s interbank market watchdog better known as NAFMII, has halted registration of new credit-linked notes, a derivatives product, that use offshore LGFV debt as underlying assets. While the NAFMII earlier this month told some brokerages who are major issuers of CLNs that the suspension is temporary, it didn’t indicate when it may be lifted.

India’s household debt likely surged to a record in the final three months of last year, with signs that consumers are boosting riskier borrowing that’s been a worry for the central bank, Bloomberg News reported. Household debt touched a new high of 39.1% of gross domestic product in the October-December quarter, up from 36.7% a year ago, estimated economists Nikhil Gupta and Tanisha Ladha of Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd in a report earlier this week. The figures are higher than the previous peak of 38.6% in the Jan-March period of 2021.

Turkey’s central bank kept interest rates unchanged, pausing a month after surprising markets with a big hike and delivering additional tightening since then, Bloomberg News reported. The Monetary Policy Committee led by Governor Fatih Karahan left the one-week repo rate at 50% on Thursday. All but two economists surveyed by Bloomberg correctly predicted the decision, while the rest saw an increase. The lira pared gains after the announcement and traded 0.2% stronger against the dollar as of 3:14 p.m. in Istanbul.

Indonesia’s central bank delivered its first rate hike of the year, defying broad projections for a hold as it looks to support a tumbling rupiah, the Wall Street Journal reported. Bank Indonesia on Wednesday raised its benchmark seven-day reverse repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.25%, tightening policy settings for the first time since October last year. The decision is a “pre-emptive and forward-looking step to strengthen rupiah’s stability and cushion the impact of worsening global risks,” Bank Indonesia Gov. Perry Warjiyo said at a press conference.

Bank of Canada officials said monetary policy easing is expected to be “gradual,” as they debate the timing of a pivot to rate cuts, Bloomberg News reported.

South Korea’s economy grew at a stronger-than-expected pace in the first quarter on improving private consumption, construction increases and steady exports, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product in Asia’s fourth-largest economy expanded 3.4% year-over-year during the January-March period, accelerating from the previous quarter’s 2.2% growth, Bank of Korea preliminary data showed Thursday. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the economy grew 1.3% for the first three months of 2024, faster than the prior quarter’s 0.6% expansion, according to the central bank.

In a conference room of the run-down headquarters of Brazilian retailer Americanas SA, Camille Loyo Faria agrees that the office has seen better days, Bloomberg News reported. It’s “ugly, as a company in judicial recovery should be,” the chief financial officer says. The 50-year-old started at the Rio de Janeiro-based company on Feb. 1, 2023, in the wake of its bankruptcy protection measure and accounting fraud that eventually reached 25 billion reais ($4.8 billion) — one of the biggest-ever in Brazil. It’s just the latest company that Faria has helped pull out of distress.

The Bank of England found a number of UK banks were unable to measure their exposure to private equity giants and their portfolio companies and ordered them to begin stress testing those relationships, Bloomberg News reported. The central bank’s Prudential Regulatory Authority reminded lenders’ chief risk officers in a letter Tuesday that it expects them to “comprehensively identify, measure, combine, and record risks” tied to buyout funds and the companies they back.

More than 60 former employees of a collapsed contractor have waited more than five years to be paid money they are owed, ConstructionNews.co.uk reported. A new report, filed earlier this month at Companies House by administrators at Begbies Traynor, said that the ex-employees were still expected to be paid in full, but the liquidators were “continuing to liaise” with the government-backed Redundancy Payments Service (RPS) over their claims.

The Ahmedabad bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has admitted the listed road infrastructure company, Sadbhav Engineering, under the corporate insolvency resolution process in an application filed by its operational creditor, SS Infra, the Economic Times of India reported. The tribunal has also appointed Sanjay Kumar Agarwal as the interim resolution professional (IRP) of the company.