Headlines

China said it will cut the reserve requirement ratio for banks within two weeks and hinted at more support measures to come, an unusually early disclosure that shows mounting urgency across President Xi Jinping’s government to shore up the economy and halt a $6 trillion stock-market rout, Bloomberg News reported. The RRR — which determines the amount of cash banks have to keep in reserve — will be lowered by 0.5 percentage points on Feb.

Scandinavian airline SAS AB will cancel and redeem all of its common shares and commercial hybrid bonds when it emerges from chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. around June, Bloomberg News reported. “SAS reiterates its expectation that there will be only a modest recovery for general unsecured creditors, no recovery for subordinated creditors and no value for SAS AB’s existing shareholders,” the carrier said in a statement released at 11 p.m. Stockholm time on Tuesday.

Banco BTG Pactual SA and Farallon Capital Management are considering injecting fresh money into troubled utility Light SA, Bloomberg News reported. The firms, both of which are Light creditors, are mulling new loans for company, including convertible notes, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing internal deliberations. The loans would be contingent on Light reaching an agreement with regulators to allow it to charge higher rates for the power it sells in Rio de Janeiro.

Banks in the European Union face closer scrutiny of how they assess the impact of interest rate changes on their balance sheets after an initial examination uncovered a patchwork of approaches, the bloc's banking watchdog said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The European Banking Authority (EBA) last year discussed with banks how they apply a rule known as interest rate risk in the banking book or IRRBB written by the global Basel Committee.

The European Central Bank has asked some banks to closely monitor activity on social media to detect a worsening in sentiment which could lead to a deposit run, two banking executives with knowledge of the request told Reuters. European regulators have sharpened scrutiny of banks' liquidity after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse in March last year, the people said, requesting anonymity because the discussions are private. Banks can run into financial trouble if clients rush to pull deposits at the same time.

The Bank of Canada (BoC) held its key overnight rate at 5% on Wednesday and said that while underlying inflation was still a concern, the bank's focus is shifting to when to cut borrowing costs rather than whether to hike again, Reuters reported. The BoC governing council has held rates steady at four consecutive policy meetings after last hiking in July. Annual inflation in December accelerated to 3.4%, still higher than the central bank's 2% target but below a June 2022 peak of 8.1%.

Nigeria's central bank aims for inflation to fall to about 21% and will work to strengthen the country's undervalued naira currency, Governor Olayemi Cardoso said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Cardoso faces pressure to raise interest rates when the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) holds a rate-setting meeting next month for the first time since he took office in September. Inflation in December hit 28.92%, its highest level in more than 27 years.

The European Union is unlikely to confiscate Russian central bank assets frozen in Europe, despite G7 plans to discuss the legality of such a move at a meeting in February, senior EU officials said, Reuters reported. The EU, United States, Japan and Canada froze some $300 billion of Russian central bank assets in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Some $200 billion of that is held in Europe, mainly in the Belgian clearing house Euroclear. The discussion comes as U.S. President Joe Biden faces Republican opposition to his request for another $61 billion in aid to Ukraine.

Eike Batista’s OSX Brasil SA has filed a new request for bankruptcy protection in a Brazilian court, it said in a filing Sunday, Bloomberg News reported. The shipbuilding company, which previously filed for bankruptcy protection in 2013, has more than 7.9 billion reais ($1.6 billion) in debt, according to the filing. Brazilian banks Caixa Economica Federal and Banco Santander Brasil SA are among its creditors, the filing said. A new judicial recovery process is necessary “in order to prevent irreversible damage” to the company, it said in the filing.

British electric-vehicle company Arrival is heading closer to insolvency after lining up a new set of advisers to oversee contingency planning, Sky News reported on Monday. The company is in talks with accounting firm EY about acting as administrator if it cannot secure rescue funding, the report added. EV firms that went public in the SPAC boom during the pandemic capitalized on strong demand from investors looking for the next Tesla. However, high interest rates, inflation, supply chain issues and production struggles have sapped their cash balances with few or no vehicles on roads.