Headlines

Investment Management Corp. of Ontario has written down its $400 million investment in Northvolt AB, the electric vehicle battery maker that filed for bankruptcy protection last year, Bloomberg News reported. The Canadian pension manager bought Northvolt convertible bonds in 2023, its largest transaction in Europe at the time. IMCO manages about C$77 billion ($53.8 billion) for public-sector groups in the province of Ontario. Northvolt filed for Chapter 11 protection in the US in November after a bid to secure rescue funding fell short, leaving it with little cash and $5.8 billion in debt.

FTX customers who deposited digital assets before the cryptocurrency exchange imploded in 2022 have waited years to get their money back. That includes one user in Prague who made a costly blunder: he accidentally deposited tens of thousands of dollars worth of Solana tokens on FTX a year after it went bankrupt, Bloomberg News reported. Lukas Bartusek said that he inadvertently transferred 2,000 tokens to an old FTX account in October 2023, nearly a year after Sam Bankman-Fried’s exchange went bankrupt, according to a Monday filing in Delaware bankruptcy court.

Japan’s financial regulator urged the country’s regional banks to pay closer attention to the risks of investing in so-called repackaged government bonds, Bloomberg News reported. At a regular meeting with regional bank heads on Wednesday, a senior official at the Financial Services Agency told lenders that they should make sure they have proper risk management in place for the financial instruments.

Tokyo has asked the U.S. government to exempt Japanese firms from U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly announced 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum, the Japan Times reported. “We have requested the U.S. government to exclude Japan from the scope of these measures,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said during a news conference Wednesday, adding that the request was made by the Japanese Embassy in Washington via diplomatic channels.

Supermarket group Ahold Delhaize and Siemens Energy said on Wednesday U.S. import tariffs will lead to higher prices as they pass on the costs, while speciality steelmaker voestalpine urged Brussels to retaliate for duties threatened by Donald Trump, Reuters reported. Executives around the world are scrambling to offset the cost of the U.S. president's move to impose 25% tariffs on aluminium and steel and keep up with changing U.S. trade policies that threaten to upend industries from autos to consumer goods to energy.

France’s economy is heading for only slight growth at the start of the year and uncertainty remains high for business leaders, the country’s central bank said, Bloomberg News reported. Gross domestic product will likely rise between 0.1% and 0.2% in the first quarter, with underlying momentum little changed from the end of 2024, according to the Bank of France’s monthly survey of 8,500 companies.

Over the last quarter century, Zimbabwe has failed to pay $21 billion in debt. Now, as the country struggles with the impact of a once-in-a-generation drought, ordinary Zimbabweans are paying the price, Bloomberg News reported. A prolonged hot and dry spell caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon has ravaged southern Africa, withering crops and leaving 26 million people across seven nations hungry, according to the United Nations’ World Food Programme. Zimbabwe has been hardest hit, with the corn crop falling by more than two-thirds from previous years.

Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said the southern African nation needs to regain access to credit lines before it can adopt the ZiG as its sole currency, Bloomberg News reported. “We need a few things in place” before the nation can have a mono currency, including making progress on restructuring $21 billion in debt, Ncube said. The nation has been locked out of capital markets since 1999 after defaulting on its debt.

Oil refiners in India — eager to keep importing cheap crude from Russia — are working with merchants, shippers and other middlemen to rebuild supply chains as tougher US sanctions come into effect, Bloomberg News reported. Speaking on the sidelines of India’s flagship energy gathering in Delhi, executives said the existing networks were being reconfigured with selling entities, tankers and insurance providers that are not on Washington’s blacklist.

Spain’s unemployment rate fell again in the fourth quarter of 2024, likely reflecting a buoyant economy last year that was boosted by tourism, investment and immigration, the Wall Street Journal reported. Joblessness fell to 10.6% in the October-December period, down from 11.2% in the three months to September, and 11.8% in the fourth quarter of 2023, Spain’s statistics body INE said Tuesday. The number of unemployed people declined by 158,600 to 2.60 million in the quarter, the agency said.