Headlines

Sri Lanka’s president boosted government workers’ pay and increased state pensions, seeking to shore up support before next year’s election as the economy emerges from its worst crisis in seven decades, Bloomberg News reported. Tax revenue is expected to increase more than 47% next year, President Ranil Wickremesinghe outlined in his budget speech in Colombo on Monday, after the government recently hiked the value-added tax rate and it clamps down on tax evasion. Borrowing will surge in order to recapitalize banks and pay off foreign debt, he said.

Egyptian inflation eased from a record high to its lowest level in four months ahead of December’s presidential elections, Bloomberg News reported. Price growth in urban parts of Egypt slowed to an annual 35.8% in October, from 38% the month before, according to figures released Saturday by the state-run statistics agency. It’s the lowest rate since June, according to Bloomberg calculations. On a monthly basis, inflation slowed to 1% from 2% in September.

Thailand’s Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin defended a controversial plan to borrow billions of dollars to fund a cash handout program, saying Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy is in a crisis and needed a stimulus to end a cycle of low single-digit growth, Bloomberg News reported. Srettha’s administration last week unveiled plans to distribute 10,000 baht ($277) each to about 50 million Thais as a one-time measure to stimulate consumption and spur business activities.

The pace of gains in Japan’s producer prices decelerated more than expected in October to the weakest in over two years, supporting the Bank of Japan’s view that inflation is cooling, Bloomberg News reported. A measure of input prices for Japanese firms rose 0.8% from a year earlier, the slowest pace of growth since gains resumed in March 2021, the Bank of Japan reported Monday. The data compared with economists’ expectations of a 0.9% increase year-on-year. From the prior month, prices fell 0.4%, compared to the consensus view of a 0% change.

Mexico's central bank governor said in a newspaper interview published on Monday that easing inflationary pressure meant the Bank of Mexico could start looking at gradually cutting its key interest rate, but that it was unlikely to happen this year, Reuters reported.

More than 30 clearing houses from across the world will participate in their biggest "fire drill" to date over the coming week to simulate how they would deal with defaulting members, the European Union's securities watchdog said on Monday, Reuters reported. Clearers, a critical part of the financial market's basic "plumbing", are backed by default funds to ensure a stock, bond or derivatives trade is completed, even if one side of the transaction goes bust.

In 1868, a British lawyer set up the first investment trust to pool together small sums of money to buy bonds issued by nations from Turkey to Egypt. A century and a half later, the sector it spawned — closed-end funds traded on stock exchanges — is now worth about £260 billion ($318 billion). It enjoyed a boom in the era of record-low interest rates, more than doubling in size, with a simple pitch: high yields for the masses. But now, central bank interest rates and bond yields are at multi-year highs and have ripped through markets around the world, Bloomberg News reported.

Mallinckrodt plc (in examination under Part 10 of the Companies Act 2014 of Ireland, and hereinafter "Mallinckrodt" or the "Company") announced on Friday that the High Court of Ireland (the "Irish High Court") has made an Order confirming a scheme of arrangement between the Company, its creditors and shareholders (the "Scheme") as proposed by the Examiner of the company, according to a press release. As previously announced, Mallinckrodt's Plan of Reorganization (the "Plan") was confirmed by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware on October 10, 2023.

China's embattled Country Garden is aiming to pull together a tentative plan to restructure its offshore debt by the end of this year, Reuters reported. The nation's biggest private property developer, which missed a coupon payment in October triggering default terms, then aims to start formal negotiations with offshore bondholders by February or March next year. They added the firm expects to inform key bondholders of its cash flow projections by the year's end, as part of the basis for the tentative restructuring plan. The sources declined to be identified as the matter was confidential.

After a major default, investor attention usually turns to the potential payout from credit default swaps, a type of security that acts as insurance against bankruptcy. But when one of China’s biggest property developers missed a coupon on its bonds late last month, few bothered to check whether there would be any money up for grabs, Bloomberg News reported. That’s because China’s CDS market is much less developed than in most major economies, meaning that many of the investors that bought Country Garden Holdings Ltd’s $10 billion of dollar bonds did so without hedging against default.