Headlines

Country Garden, once China's top property developer by sales, posted on Tuesday a net loss of 12.84 billion yuan ($1.75 billion) for the first half of 2024, as conditions deteriorated amid a prolonged sector-wide slump, Reuters reported. The loss followed a full-year net loss of 178.40 billion yuan for 2023, the company said in a separate statement. Country Garden, which defaulted on $11 billion in offshore bonds in late 2023, had delayed the publication of its 2023 full-year and 2024 interim results.

New loans extended by Chinese banks posted their first decline since 2011 last year, underscoring weak demand for financing in an economy plagued by deflation and a housing slump, Bloomberg News reported. Financial institutions offered 18.09 trillion yuan ($2.47 trillion) of new loans in 2024, according to data released by the People’s Bank of China on Tuesday, representing the first annual drop in 13 years. Aggregate financing, a broad measure of credit, also rose less than the previous year’s increase marking the first slowdown since 2021.

China’s central bank again vowed to help the economy grow this year, firming expectations of more monetary easing as it walks a fine line between conflicting policy targets complicated by a possible trade war with the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reported. Officials at the People’s Bank of China said at a Tuesday briefing that they will ramp up support for the economy with measures like lower interest rates and reducing the amount of cash lenders must hold as reserves to free up liquidity.

As Christmas holiday bills arrive, nearly half of surveyed British Columbians are "teetering on the edge of financial insolvency," with 31 per cent saying they're already unable to pay their bills, TodayinBC.com reported. These figures appear in the latest MNP Consumer Debt Index, which finds a "sharp increase" of nine per cent to 46 per cent among British Columbians, who are less than $200 from not being able to pay their bills and debt payments each month. This increase wipes out the nine percent improvement from the last report.

Ukraine’s debt-management chief cautioned investors against betting on a quick and tidy resolution to the conflict with Russia based on Donald Trump’s return to the White House next week, Bloomberg News reported. “If you look at our yield curve, people expect some quick, positive outcomes,” Yuriy Butsa, Ukraine’s government commissioner for public debt management, said on the sidelines of the Invisso CEE Forum in Vienna on Tuesday.

China announced on Monday that its trade surplus reached almost $1 trillion last year as its exports swamped the globe, while the country’s own businesses and households spent cautiously on imports, the New York Times reported. When adjusted for inflation, China’s trade surplus last year far exceeded any in the world in the past century, even those of export powerhouses like Germany, Japan or the United States. Chinese factories are dominating global manufacturing on a scale not experienced by any country since the United States after World War II.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said the UK will meet its fiscal rules “at all times,” as she faced ongoing pressure to explain how she’ll stabilize Britain’s public finances following a recent spike in borrowing costs, Bloomberg News reported. “We remain committed to those fiscal rules,” Reeves said in the House of Commons on Tuesday, referring to her self-imposed target that day-to-day government spending be covered by tax receipts.

One of the German lenders that saw its riskiest type of debt slump when concerns about the state of US commercial real estate market spread across the world last year, is now looking to replace the bond, Bloomberg New reported. Aareal Bank AG is offering to buy back a €300 million ($308 million) so-called Additional Tier 1 bond and exercise the option to repay it in April if any of it is left outstanding, it announced on Tuesday. This is contingent on issuing new AT1s denominated in U.S. dollars.

Norsk Hydro became the sole owner of battery recycler Hydrovolt on Monday after the Norwegian aluminium maker agreed to buy the remaining shares from ailing Swedish battery maker Northvolt for 78 million Norwegian crowns ($6.79 million), Reuters reported. Northvolt, once hailed as Europe's best shot at a home-grown electric-vehicle battery champion, has been slimming down and racing to stay afloat after being hobbled by production problems, loss of a major customer contract and a funding crisis. The battery maker entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S.