Headlines

The number of Swedish companies going out of business reached the highest level since at least 1999, with several large builders going bankrupt as construction of new homes is screeching to a halt, Bloomberg News reported. As the Swedish economy is showing signs of buckling under the pressure of elevated inflation and rising interest rates, bankruptcies increased by 38% in August, according to a monthly release from Creditsafe.

VanMoof, the Dutch e-bike maker that gained a zealous following but declared bankruptcy last month, has been acquired by Lavoie, an upscale electric scooter company, the firms announced on Thursday, the New York Times reported. Riders of the expensive and technologically advanced VanMoof bikes were left in limbo by the company’s bankruptcy, because the machines are built from proprietary parts that only the company made and many of the bikes’ functions are linked to a smartphone app that runs on the company’s servers.

Switzerland was urged to prepare properly for the failure of a big bank on Friday by a group of experts in the wake of the collapse of Credit Suisse, but their report to government skirted radical reform some say is needed, Reuters reported. UBS Group emerged as Switzerland’s single largest bank earlier this year after the government hastily arranged and partly bankrolled its takeover of stricken Credit Suisse to prevent that bank's collapse.

Financial institutions in Singapore are scouring client records after police raided a sprawling criminal organization with stockpiles of cash—and dozens of bank accounts, the Wall Street Journal reported. Police officers and agents in the city-state arrested 10 foreign nationals in mid-August on charges including fraud and money laundering. The arrests followed a series of raids that led to the discovery of $630 million worth of properties, cars, luxury goods and cash, and $81 million of assets held across 35 bank accounts.

Japanese household spending suffered its biggest drop in nearly 2-1/2 years squeezed by rising prices, although volatility in some items meant the outlook might not be as gloomy as the headline figures suggested, Reuters reported. Japan's economy grew much faster than expected in the second quarter, helped by the end of COVID-19 curbs and a resurgence in inbound tourism, and analysts expect private consumption to support overall growth amid weakness in global demand.

South Korea’s inflation outstripped forecasts in August partly on the back of higher energy costs, reinforcing the case for the central bank to keep the door open to further policy tightening to rein in prices, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices advanced 3.4% from a year earlier, quickening from 2.3% in July, the statistics office reported Tuesday. The Bank of Korea is keeping its options open for potential rate hikes until it’s confident price pressures are well under control.

A surprise second-quarter contraction and a flat growth estimate for July suggests that the Bank of Canada has probably done enough to bring inflation to heel, Bloomberg News reported. Gross domestic product unexpectedly shrank at a 0.2% annualized pace last quarter, and economic growth at the beginning of the third didn’t look much stronger. While the contraction was partly due to wildfires and drought, household consumption was weak, suggesting aggressive increases to interest rates have already reined in spending by heavily indebted Canadians. First-quarter growth was revised downward.

Australia's corporate regulator said on Tuesday it was taking Westpac Banking Corp to court over its alleged failure to respond to customers' financial hardship notices between 2015 and 2022 within the required administrative time frame, Reuters reported. Under Section 72 of Australia's National Credit Code, an individual with overdue payments can request a change to the terms of their credit contract on the grounds of financial hardship, and creditors are expected to provide a response in writing within 21 days of being informed.

China allowed large cities to cut down payments for homebuyers and encouraged lenders to lower rates on existing mortgages in its latest attempts to halt a slide in the country’s residential property market, Bloomberg News reported. The nationwide minimum down payment will be 20% for first-time buyers and 30% for second-time purchasers, according to a joint statement from the People’s Bank of China and National Administration of Financial Regulation on Thursday. The mortgage-rate cuts will be negotiated between banks and customers. Both policies go into effect Sept. 25.

In the beginning, Hui Ka Yan followed a simple formula. Borrow to buy land. Sell homes on the site before they are built. Use the cash to pay lenders and finance the next real estate project. For two decades, starting in the mid-1990s, this approach was enormously lucrative as Chinese home prices soared. It transformed Hui, a former steel industry employee from a rural village, into China’s richest man. And it turned his company, China Evergrande Group, into a vast real-estate empire.