Headlines

A UK Treasury minister cautioned councils against selling assets even as the government proposes to loosen budget rules to help boost the finances of struggling town halls, Bloomberg News reported. “I wouldn’t support any selling off of community assets,” Laura Trott, chief secretary to the Treasury, said in an interview with Times Radio on Sunday. Her remarks contrast with government proposals that would give councils more flexibility to sell assets to help fund front-line services and ward off a wave of bankruptcies, as revealed by Bloomberg on Saturday.

WeWork’s top UK subsidiary posted a loss of £110 million in 2022 and said it owed nearly three quarters of a billion pounds to its US parent in signs the London office market’s sluggish recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has crippled its finances, the Evening Standard reported.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has admitted Canara Bank's application to initiate the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) against Mumbai-based real estate developer Shah Group Builders, the Economic Times of India reported. The bank had moved the bankruptcy court against the developer in 2020 following its default on loans worth nearly ₹100 crore including interest thereon. The account was declared a non-performing (NPA) in December 2016.

Swedish landlord Oscar Properties should enter bankruptcy proceedings after failing to uphold a settlement agreement with a creditor, according to a statement, Bloomberg News reported. The creditor in question is Brf Innovationen, a housing cooperative that owns one of the two flagship residential towers in Stockholm built by Oscar Properties. Oscar Properties plans to refute the claim. “The board is continuously evaluating the options to ensure the continued operations of the company, and is in discussions with Brf Innovationen and other creditors,” it said.

Supply chain pressures cooled down last month, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said on Friday, but it's possible the benign reading may be the calm before some turbulence arrives, Reuters reported. The bank’s Global Supply Chain Pressure index moved to a reading of -0.15 in December from November’s upwardly revised 0.13. December's negative reading points to below-normal supply chain pressures, which suggests a diminished contribution to inflation pressures.

Canada's economy gained a net 100 jobs in December, entirely in part-time work, and the jobless rate held at 5.8%, Statistics Canada data showed on Friday, Reuters reported. Employment in the goods producing sector fell by a net 42,900 jobs, largely in manufacturing. The services sector was up by a net 43,100 positions, mostly in professional, scientific and technical services, as well as health care and social assistance. Read more.

Activity in Canada's service sector deteriorated for a seventh consecutive month in December as elevated borrowing costs weighed on the housing market, S&P Global Canada services PMI data showed on Thursday, Reuters reported. The headline business activity index edged up to 44.6 in December from a near three-and-a-half-year low of 44.5 in November. However, it remained well below the 50 threshold which separates expansion from contraction in the sector. The index has been below 50 since June.

Argentine President Javier Milei is proposing a local debt swap that could top $71 billion, aiming to stabilize the country’s finances by pushing off maturities and reducing the deficit to zero, Bloomberg News reported. Economy Minister Luis Caputo and Finance Secretary Pablo Quirno told representatives of local and foreign banks operating in Argentina that they plan to issue new peso bonds in February to swap for the 2024 maturities, according to four people with direct knowledge of the meeting that took place Thursday afternoon.

The U.S. Supreme Court review of Purdue Pharma’s $6 billion opioid settlement could open the door for Canada’s municipalities and indigenous First Nations—the only two groups not made up of individual claimants that have opposed the deal—to seek compensation they say has been denied them, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Purdue’s bankruptcy plan would compensate thousands of individuals, healthcare providers, and U.S. state and local governments accusing the maker of the OxyContin painkiller of helping to fuel the opioid epidemic.

The glitzy Victoria Square development, boasting two skyscrapers and a new Hilton Hotel, was to be a new landmark for the London commuter town of Woking. Instead, it stands as a monument to how financial bets by local councils can go badly wrong, Bloomberg News reported. The hotel is yet to open its doors. Work to replace unsafe cladding on the outside of the building, which dominates the skyline of the town of 100,000 people, will only be completed this summer, almost four years after the complex’s scheduled opening was blown off track by the Covid-19 pandemic.