Headlines

Almost half of councils in England risk falling into bankruptcy without action to address a £4.6bn deficit amassed under a Conservative-era policy, the government’s spending watchdog has warned, The Guardian reported. In a damning report, the National Audit Office said that rising pressure on public services and repeated delays to reform the funding of local government meant town halls were in an “unsustainable” financial position.

The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System booked a loss on its $325 million investment in Northvolt AB, the Swedish electric vehicle battery maker that filed for bankruptcy protection last year, Bloomberg News reported. “At the time we made the investments, Northvolt represented an attractive growth opportunity supported by several other of the world’s most respected investors,” a spokesperson for the pension manager said by email.

Canada's big bank CEOs are urging the federal government to remove internal trade barriers, evaluate tax policies and other regulation as the country's top lenders cautioned that tariff and trade risks are clouding the economic outlook, Reuters reported. The six big Canadian banks, which control more than 90% of the banking market and are among the biggest publicly listed companies in Canada, beat analysts' expectations for first-quarter profits but set aside large sums to shield against bad loans in an uncertain economy. The banks' CEOs delivered similar remarks on earnings calls this week.

Germany’s jobless rate held steady in February, a sign that recent workforce reductions announced at some major companies hasn’t yet significantly dented employment, the Wall Street Journal reported. The adjusted unemployment rate in Europe’s largest economy was 6.2% this month, the same as in January, according to data from Germany’s Federal Employment Agency published on Friday. Meanwhile, jobless claims ticked up by 5,000 in February, albeit slowing from the 11,000 of January. Registered job vacancies stood at 639,000, some 67,000 fewer than the same point last year.

Core consumer prices in Japan's capital rose 2.2% in February from a year earlier, data showed on Friday, slowing for the first time in four months due to revived energy subsidies but remaining well above the central bank's 2% target, Reuters reported. The persistently high inflation will likely support the case for the central bank to continue its monetary policy tightening campaign.

India’s economy picked up in the most recent quarter as manufacturing and government spending regained momentum, Bloomberg News reported. The world’s fifth-largest economy grew 6.2% from a year earlier in the October-December quarter, according to provisional figures issued by the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation on Friday. The print was higher than the previous quarter’s revised figure of a 5.6% expansion.

Canada’s economic growth accelerated last quarter and momentum carried into the start of this year as the central bank’s forceful rate cuts boosted household spending, Bloomberg News reported. Advance data suggest gross domestic product rose 0.3% in January, following a 0.2% expansion in December that ended the fourth quarter with a stronger-than-expected increase at a 2.6% annualized pace, Statistics Canada said Friday. That’s the strongest growth since the second quarter, and a pickup from an upwardly revised 2.2% increase between July and September.

China's factory activity likely contracted for a second month in February, keeping alive calls for even more stimulus to prop up depressed domestic demand in the world's second-largest economy as manufacturers brace for fresh U.S. tariffs, Reuters reported. A Reuters poll of 21 economists forecast the official purchasing managers' index (PMI) will come in at 49.9, up from January's 49.1 but still below the 50-point threshold that separates growth from contraction in activity.

China's banks are cutting the interest rates offered on U.S. dollar deposits after being asked to do so by the central bank, possibly to curtail dollar hoarding and also prop up a weakening yuan, Reuters reported. Mainland retail investors and exporters have built up nearly a trillion dollars worth of deposits because of higher U.S. yields and the yuan's slide. Two banking sources with direct knowledge of the matter said that banks across China, big and small, have over the past few weeks been told by the People's Bank of China (PBOC) they have to cut dollar deposit rates.

The latest study conducted by Coface Romania revealed that 7,274 new insolvency proceedings were opened in 2024, compared to 6,650 in 2023, marking a 9.38% increase. Among companies with a turnover above EUR 5 million, there was a 75% rise in insolvencies last year, Romania-Insider.com reported. Denied payment instruments have increased both in value (+30%) and number (+17%) compared to 2023 but continue to remain below the levels recorded in 2019, Coface said.