Headlines

Singapore’s government faces increased scrutiny over the fallout from the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto empire, Bloomberg News reported. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Deputy Prime Minster Lawrence Wong face a raft of parliamentary questions this week over the losses incurred by retail investors and the due diligence undertaken by state-owned investor Temasek Holdings Pte, which wrote down its entire $275 million investment in FTX. The FTX exchange collapsed into bankruptcy on Nov.

China Evergrande Group said on Monday its unit has entered into a deal to sell a piece of commercial land in Shenzhen for 7.54 billion yuan ($1.05 billion), as the embattled property developer looks to shave off its massive debt, Reuters reported. Evergrande, which has about $300 billion in liabilities, has been at the centre of a deepening property debt crisis in China that has seen multiple developers defaulting on their offshore debt obligations over the past year, prompting many to consider debt restructuring.

Adler Group SA shares jumped as much as 64% after the landlord agreed an expensive deal with creditors to extend debt maturities and postpone publication of audited accounts, Bloomberg News reported. Despite Monday’s record gain, the company’s shares have still lost almost three quarters of their value this year after a damning short report published by Viceroy Research in October 2021 accused the company of being run for the benefit of tycoon Cevdet Caner.

German car supplier Ruester GmbH said that it has filed for restructuring in self-administration, a special form of insolvency proceedings that give the owners bigger say, citing liquidity problems partly caused by higher energy costs, Reuters reported. As part of the proceedings, Ruester, which makes annual sales of around 120 million euros ($125 million) and made two acquisitions in 2022, will look for a buyer as a way to keep the company afloat, it said.

The Canadian Labour Congress is welcoming new legislation protecting workers’ pensions in case their employer declares bankruptcy or insolvency, HRReporter.com reported. “For decades we have seen companies pay out creditors, even pay out bonuses to executives, after declaring bankruptcy, while workers wait at the back of the line. We are glad to finally see workers being prioritized over banks and CEOs in bankruptcies situations,” says Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC).

Financial firms in the European Union will have to show how quickly they could recover from a cyber attack as they rely more for key services on 'cloud computing' giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM, the EU said on Monday, Reuters reported. Regulators worry about the speed and scale at which banks, insurers and investment firms are moving critical functions and market operations onto a handful of cloud platforms. A glitch at one cloud company could potentially bring down services across many financial firms, regulators have said.

Euro zone inflation has not peaked and the risk is that it will turn out even higher than currently expected, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Monday, Reuters reported. "We do not see the components or the direction that would lead me to believe that we've reached peak inflation and that it's going to decline in short order," Lagarde told the European Parliament. "Whenever I ask my top-notch economists at the ECB ...

Protests are erupting in major cities in China over President Xi Jinping’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19, an unusual show of defiance in the country as the economic and social costs from snap lockdowns and other strict restrictions escalate, the Wall Street Journal reported. Demonstrations occurred throughout the weekend in both Beijing and Shanghai. According to eyewitness accounts, there were also protests in the eastern city of Nanjing and in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic.

A broad measure of Brazilian consumer and business credit default ratios rose in October to its highest level in almost four years, central bank data showed on Monday, amid high borrowing costs and aggressive monetary tightening, Reuters reported. The default ratio in non-earmarked loans increased to 4.2% from 4.1% in September, the highest since August 2018's 4.22%. At the same time, bank lending spreads were up to 30.3% from 28.6% the month before.

Pemberton Asset Management is fast-tracking plans to triple the size of its private debt funds and plug a European lending gap being created by increasingly skittish banks, Bloomberg News reported. The $17 billion investment firm is in the process of raising capital for five credit strategies, which include lending on mid-market buyouts, Founder and Managing Partner Symon Drake-Brockman said in an interview. “We are aiming to become a $50 billion manager in the European marketplace over the next five years,” Drake-Brockman said.