Headlines

The number of corporate bankruptcies in Japan surpassed 10,000 for the second year in a row in 2025 as smaller businesses were hard hit by soaring labor costs and surging prices, Tokyo Shoko Research, a credit research firm, said on Monday, the Japan Times reported. The survey showed that the number of business failures with liabilities of ¥10 million or more grew 2.9% from the previous year to 10,300 in 2025, rising for the fourth consecutive year. Total liabilities left by failed companies dropped 32% to ¥1,592.3 billion.

A distressed debt specialist has applied to appoint administrators to broadband provider G.Network a week after taking over the business, in a move towards the first insolvency among the challenger companies in the UK’s telecoms industry for years, the Financial Times reported. FitzWalter Capital, which last week bought G.Network from previous owners USS and Cube Infrastructure Managers, filed to appoint insolvency practitioners on Monday, according to court paperwork.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear Citigroup's bid to avoid a lawsuit accusing the bank of causing ​more than $1 billion of losses by orchestrating a vast fraud at the bankrupt ‌Mexican oil and gas services company Oceanografia, Reuters reported. The justices turned away Citigroup's appeal of a lower court's May 2025 decision ‌to revive the decade-old lawsuit by more than 30 plaintiffs including Oceanografia bondholders, shipping companies and Netherlands-based Rabobank. By doing so, the Supreme Court let the lower court's decision stand.

The global economy is proving more resilient than expected, with 2026 GDP growth expected ‌to improve slightly over forecasts from last June, the World Bank said on Tuesday while warning that growth is too concentrated in advanced countries and overall too weak to reduce extreme poverty, Reuters reported. The World Bank's semi-annual Global Economic Prospects report shows that global output growth will slow slightly to 2.6% this year from 2.7% in 2025 before edging back to 2.7% in 2027.

The chiefs of many of the world's ​major central banks issued a ‌joint statement in support of Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday after the Trump ‌administration threatened him with a ​criminal indictment, Reuters reported. "We stand in full solidarity with the Federal ‍Reserve System and its Chair Jerome H. Powell," the heads of the ⁠European Central Bank, the ‍Bank of England and nine other institutions ‌said. "The ‌independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in ⁠the interest ⁠of ​the citizens that we serve," they added. The U.S.

Nigeria is set to pass a law that would place it among the first African countries to regulate artificial intelligence, tightening oversight of one of the continent’s fastest-growing digital markets after years of largely unchecked expansion by global technology firms, Bloomberg News reported. The National Digital Economy and E-Governance Bill would give regulators new powers over data, algorithms and digital platforms, filling a vacuum that has existed since Nigeria published its draft AI strategy in 2024.

The Supreme Court of Panama is winding up deliberations that will decide whether a Hong Kong company can run two ports at either end of the Panama Canal, a decision closely watched in Washington and Beijing, the Wall Street Journal reported. The case carries the weight of geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China. President Trump has said he wanted to take back control of the canal, which the U.S. built in the early 20th century and handed over to Panama in late 1999.

The U.S. will put a 25% tariff on any country that does business with Iran, President Trump said on Monday, raising pressure on the Middle Eastern nation after days of protests against the government, the Wall Street Journal reported. “Effective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

A federal judge on Monday cleared Danish offshore wind developer Orsted to resume work on its nearly finished Revolution Wind project, which U.S. President Donald Trump's administration halted along with four other projects last month, Reuters reported. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth is a legal setback for Trump, who has sought to block expansion of offshore wind in federal waters.

The volume of retail sales increased by 2.5 per cent in November compared with a year earlier as consumers took advantage of Black Friday sales, the Irish Times reported. However, the volume of sales was up by just 0.5 per cent compared with October, which may suggest people were still careful with their money despite the opportunity for bargains. Excluding motor trades, the monthly volume of retail sales was up by 0.2 per cent in November and by 1 per cent in the year.