Headlines

Country Garden, a Chinese real estate giant, has lost billions of dollars and racked up $200 billion in unpaid bills. It’s on the hook to deliver, by one estimate, nearly one million apartments across hundreds of cities in China. The privately owned developer, founded by a farmer three decades ago, is inching closer to default, the New York Times reported. In China’s housing market, there are plenty of deadbeat developers no longer paying their bills. The possible collapse of Country Garden is one to pay attention to. The company has tried to project confidence.

The U.K.’s headline rate of inflation fell in July, though key components of prices remained stubbornly hot, adding pressure on the Bank of England to keep raising interest rates to cool the highest inflation rate among leading industrialized countries, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer prices were 6.8% higher in July compared with the same month a year earlier, easing from the 7.9% increase recorded in June, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal expected inflation to decline to 6.9%.

The Dutch economy has entered a recession as it shrank 0.3% on a quarterly basis in the second quarter, a first estimate published by Statistics Netherlands on Wednesday showed, Reuters reported. The euro zone's fifth largest economy shrank for the second consecutive quarter, after a 0.4% contraction in the first three months of the year. Economic growth in the Netherlands had been almost 5% per year in 2021 and 2022 in a quick recovery from a COVID-19 slump.

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff team will visit Colombo in a month's time for the first review on Sri Lanka's loan programme, Reuters reported. The Washington, D.C.-based lender approved a nearly $3 billion bailout for crisis-hit Sri Lanka in March. The Asian island is struggling with its worst financial crisis in over seven decades, triggered by a severe shortage of foreign exchange.

The Mexican government is likely to continue supporting heavily indebted state oil firm Pemex with about $15 billion per year, Fitch ratings agency said in an a report on Wednesday, adding these will at least cover international bond debt amortizations, Reuters reported. However, should the government substantively increase its support for Pemex, this would have a negative credit effect on the sovereign, Fitch added.

The Czech government approved on Wednesday a bill allowing the taxation of large multinational companies which tend to book their profits in countries with a lower tax burden, Reuters reported. The bill affects firms whose annual revenues exceeded 750 million euros ($817.05 million) in at least two of the past four years. The aim is for multinationals to pay a profit tax of at least 15%. "We will join countries which refuse to allow corporate profits to be diverted into tax havens," Finance Minister Zbynek Stanjura said during a televised press conference.

Russia’s currency crisis might not follow the classic emerging-market template: Rather than a sharp depreciation stemmed by painful interest-rate rises, we are more likely to see a slow but inexorable decline, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Bank of Russia raised borrowing costs from 8.5% to 12% Tuesday in an attempt to stop a slide in the ruble. A day earlier, $1 briefly bought as much as 102 rubles, prompting rate setters to call an emergency meeting.

Some Bank of Ireland customers were able to withdraw money they did not have Tuesday and early Wednesday after an hours-long technical glitch that also halted many of the bank's online services, the Associated Press reported. The outage allowed some customers to transfer and withdraw funds “above their normal limits,” the Bank of Ireland said. Customers could withdraw up to €500 ($546) with their Bank of Ireland card, the bank confirmed to the Associated Press on Wednesday.

Nigeria's suspended central bank governor Godwin Emefiele will appear in a high court in Abuja on Thursday, when he is expected to enter a plea in a 20-count indictment, a government lawyer said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Government lawyers, on Tuesday, said they had filed additional graft charges against the governor, including allegedly "conferring unlawful advantages" and "unlawful procurement".

KBBO Group and its hospitals unit have received creditor approval for a debt restructuring plan, two years after the Abu Dhabi-based investment firm’s founder filed for bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Creditors approved Emirates Hospitals Group’s plan earlier this week, according to people familiar with the matter and a presentation seen by Bloomberg News. The deal allows Emirates Hospitals to stave off liquidation and paves the way for a sale of the company by 2025. KBBO also received the go-ahead this month, the people said, asking not to be named because the information isn’t public.