Headlines

Nigeria’s top court ordered the central bank to halt its removal of old high-denomination banknotes from circulation, a move that’s created an acute cash shortage in Africa’s largest economy, Bloomberg News reported. The Supreme Court decided Friday that the Central Bank of Nigeria’s plan to discontinue the use of old bills by Feb. 10 was unconstitutional. The judges ruled that the notes should remain in circulation until the end of the year, Nasir El-Rufai, one of the state governors that brought the suit, told reporters afterwards.

Retail giant Nordstrom will exit the Canadian market, shutting down its 13 stores in the country amid stagnant sales, the company said. The move will cut approximately 2,500 jobs, the Washington Post reported. Nordstrom’s decision makes it the second major American retailer to wind down operations in Canada this year. Bed Bath & Beyond, which has come close to filing for bankruptcy in the United States, had in February cited insolvency to close its Canada stores, according to court documents. Court filings by Nordstrom in Canada reveal a dismal picture.

Ireland's domestic economy fell into a technical recession in the final quarter of 2022, Central Statistics Office data showed on Friday, but still grew by 8.2% for the year as a whole while the broader but unreliable measure of GDP powered further ahead, Reuters reported. With Ireland's large multinational sector often distorting gross domestic product (GDP), officials prefer to use modified domestic demand to gauge the strength of the economy and it fell 1.3% quarter-on-quarter, following a 1.1% decline in the third quarter.

Brazil’s development bank plans to issue tax-free bonds to double credit operations to nearly $40 billion without the Treasury’s help, according to its planning and project structuring director, Bloomberg News reported. Nelson Barbosa, who served as finance minister under Dilma Rousseff and has now joined the ranks of the bank known as BNDES, said the bonds will be linked to development projects in areas where the institution wants to invest, such as energy transition, innovation and infrastructure. They will also be available to individual investors, sweetened by the exemption of income tax.

Strikes in France to protest against government pension reforms hit power giant Electricite de France SA for a third consecutive day after workers cut output at a number of nuclear reactors, Bloomberg News reported. The walkouts reduced production on Sunday by about 4 gigawatts across generators at four plants including Tricastin, Flamanville, Cattenom and Paluel, according to filings published on EDF’s website. The labor strife is also spreading to the trucking industry, with freight haulers planning to block some logistics and industrial centers early Monday, Le Parisien reported.

Bondholders are bracing for a potential default by Pakistan as the beleaguered nation struggles to meet billions of dollars in debt repayments by June, Bloomberg News reported. The nation’s dollar bonds due next year slid to the lowest since November on Thursday as investors weighed its ability to honor $7 billion of repayments in the coming months, including a Chinese loan of $2 billion due in March, according to Fitch Ratings. The rupee slumped 6.7% to 285.09 per dollar at close, according to State Bank of Pakistan.

The management of troubled Brazilian retailer Americanas SA denied the existence of the financial operations that led to an accounting scandal early this year, a report by local newspaper O Globo showed on Wednesday, citing internal investigation documents, Reuters reported.

Mexico’s central bank trimmed its economic growth forecasts for this year and next, after raising borrowing costs more aggressively than expected in February, Bloomberg News reported. Banxico, as the central bank is known, estimates that gross domestic product will expand 1.6% in 2023, according to the main scenario of its quarterly inflation report released Wednesday. That’s below the 1.8% seen in the previous report, which was published Nov. 30. For 2024, it forecasts growth of 1.8%, down from 2.1%.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Thursday he will launch a plan to tame inflation with other Latin American governments, Reuters reported. Lopez Obrador said he has already spoken with the presidents of Brazil, Argentina, Cuba and Colombia to join forces in a plan that seeks to remove tariffs to reduce the price of food items. "We are going to carry out an anti-inflationary plan of mutual aid and growth, for economic and commercial exchange between Latin American countries," the president said in a regular news conference.

Brazil's Secretariat of Economic Policy (SPE) said on Thursday that the sharp 2022 economic slowdown is mainly due to reduced liquidity in the external environment and the contractionary cycle of monetary policy in the country, Reuters reported. In a statement about the GDP performance, which rose 2.9% last year compared to 5% in 2021, SPE said that the country's high benchmark interest rate worsens the conditions of both bank and non-bank credit, posing a risk to activity this year by making it difficult for companies to roll over debt.