Headlines

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has invited politicians including opposition leader Imran Khan for a conference amid negotiations with the International Monetary Fund to avoid bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Sharif has called an all-parties conference on February 7 amid economic and terrorism challenges, state-run Pakistan Television reports. A team from the lender is visiting Pakistan until February 9 to revive its loan program. Sharif’s ruling coalition government toppled Khan as prime minister in a confidence vote last year.

Australia outlined plans to arm its officials with more tools to police the volatile crypto sector, including additional manpower for the securities regulator in the wake of the global implosion of the FTX exchange, Bloomberg News reported. The Australian Securities & Investments Commission is expanding its digital-asset team and enforcement measures, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said in a statement Friday. The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission is boosting efforts to curb scams after a spate of demands for crypto ransoms.

Lithuania, which saw registration of crypto companies soar almost fivefold last year, is reining in the growth of digital-asset service providers to address transparency issues and money-laundering risks, Bloomberg News reported. The Registry Office in Vilnius released a list of 206 crypto companies Thursday that pass a set of stricter regulatory requirements imposed last November. Regulators winnowed down a list of 850 companies after imposing the new rules, according to the Finance Ministry.

In the space of just five years, a little-known company on the outskirts of London has grown into a payments-industry powerhouse, processing more than 1 billion euros ($1 billion) in transactions every month. Backed by licenses from regulators in the UK and Lithuania, Transactive Systems Ltd. touted itself as “one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in Europe,” with an ability to service clients from “compliance-intense industries” including cryptocurrencies, gambling and foreign-exchange trading, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg.

Ghana plans to convert an estimated 40 billion cedis ($3.3 billion) of loans owed to its central bank into bonds, making it the single biggest holder of domestic government securities and exposing it to an ongoing debt restructuring, Bloomberg News reported. The bonds, due to be issued by the finance ministry, will also cover interest owed to the Bank of Ghana, said the people, who asked not to be named because they’re not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Oi SA, the distressed Brazilian telecom operator, asked a court to shield it from creditors ahead of a major debt payment, in what may lead to a second bankruptcy protection process in seven years, Bloomberg News reported. The company, which underwent one of the largest corporate restructurings in Brazil’s history — that began in 2016 and ended just last year — said it needs urgent help to fend off creditors, according to a filing to a Rio de Janeiro court seen by Bloomberg News. The company confirmed the request for a preliminary injunction on Thursday.

The bankrupt FTX group of cryptocurrency companies extended the deadlines to bid for its Japan and Europe businesses as administrators strive to raise funds to help pay back creditors, Bloomberg News reported. The preliminary bid deadline is now March 8 and the auction date becomes April 26, according to a court filing on Wednesday. Administrators in December put several FTX units on the auction block, including LedgerX, the Japanese and Singaporean crypto exchanges, and the European digital assets and derivatives business.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development detailed on Thursday the final guidance for governments on how to bring the new global minimum corporate tax into their law books, taking the reform a step closer to roll out next year, Reuters reported. In the deepest overhaul of cross-border tax rules in a generation, nearly 140 countries had agreed in 2021 to apply a minimum tax rate of 15% on multinationals by committing to a top-up tax on profits booked in countries that have lower rates.

The European Central Bank raised interest rates by 0.5% on Thursday and explicitly signalled at least one more hike of the same magnitude next month, reaffirming it would stay the course in the fight against high inflation, Reuters reported. But financial markets immediately interpreted the move as suggesting the tightening cycle might in fact end soon - just as they had done on Wednesday after U.S. Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell said there were signs inflation was easing.

The Bank of England raised interest rates for a 10th consecutive time on Thursday, by half a percentage point, as policymakers kept up their vigilant stance against inflationary pressures, the New York Times reported. The bank’s policymakers lifted the key rate to 4 percent, the highest since 2008. But after more than a year of rising interest rates, inflation in Britain and several other major economies appears to have peaked, and the bank’s officials softened their tone on the future path of rate increases as the economy enters a contraction.