Headlines

Switzerland’s government will not receive a payout from the Swiss National Bank for 2022, as the central bank projects the biggest loss in its 116-year history, Bloomberg News reported. The SNB expects an annual loss of about 132 billion francs ($143 billion), more than five times the previous record, it said Monday in preliminary results. The largest part of this, 131 billion francs, stems from collapsed valuations of its large pile of holdings in foreign currencies, accrued as a result of decade-long purchases to weaken the franc.

Mexico's headline inflation ended 2022 slightly below analysts' expectations, while core inflation finally appeared to have peaked, data from the national statistics agency showed on Monday, Reuters reported. Annual headline inflation in December reached 7.82%, up moderately from 7.80% in November, but still below the record 8.70% reached in August and September. Meanwhile the core index, which strips out some volatile food and energy prices, hit 8.35% on an annual basis in December, dropping from November's 8.51%, and the first slowdown since its stubborn upwards cycle began.

Thousands of protesters supporting Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court in the capital Brasília Sunday, many calling for military intervention to remove Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the leftist leader who took office last week, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Spain will seek European Union permission to extend its temporary cap on reference prices for natural gas and coal used by power plants until at least the end of 2024, Energy Minister Teresa Ribera said on Monday, Reuters reported. The so-called Iberian mechanism, in place in Spain and Portugal after the two countries reached a deal with the European Commission in the spring of 2022, is a joint scheme through which fossil fuel plants' power costs are subsidised in a bid to bring down soaring electricity prices.

Prices for staples such as meat, clothing, travel and medicine have been rising as the Egyptian pound fell 36.5% last year against the U.S. dollar, making it the third-worst-performing currency in the world after the Sri Lankan rupee and the Argentine peso. Inflation hit nearly 19% in November and economists expect it to rise to 25% by March, the Wall Street Journal reported. As prices surged, it became more expensive for the government to import food, sparking hoarding. Government officials have said that bread, rice and cooking oil have been missing from some store shelves.

The number of Canadians filing for insolvency is approaching pre-pandemic levels, according to numbers from the federal Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, CBC.ca reported. Insolvency rates dropped during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Michelle Statz, a Saskatchewan-based licensed insolvency trustee with Bromwich+Smith, says that November 2022 saw the highest number of insolvencies since March 2020, the month that saw COVID-19 lockdowns and the announcement of the initial Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).

U.S. managed services and cloud connectivity provider GTT, formerly called Global Telecom and Technology, has emerged from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases after more than two years of corporate and financial restructuring, BNAmericas.com reported. The company, which maintains ethernet and IP sites in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City, first filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2021. "Over the past two years, we have concentrated relentlessly on transforming our business into a customer-focused, managed services provider with a culture of continuous improvement.

Bank of India has initiated insolvency proceedings against Kolkata-based commercial equipment manufacturer TIL (Tractors India) to recover its dues as previous recovery efforts have failed, the Economic Times of India reported. Five banks, including BoI, have total receivables of ₹600 crore from the company that has been classified as a non-performing asset by banks. "The case has been filed in the NCLT pending admission. There was no other recourse since the company is bleeding and no resolution is in sight," said a person aware of the process.

Sri Lanka’s bondholders aren’t living up to their obligations and should cancel debt to allow the country to get out of its economic crisis, a group of international academics said in a letter, Bloomberg News reported. Private creditors own almost 40% of the country’s external debt, mostly in the form of International Sovereign Bonds, but higher interest rates mean they receive more than half of debt payments, the group said in the letter, which was signed by more than 180 professors from around the world.

Declining world supply chain pressures are being challenged by new disruptions in China tied to the coronavirus pandemic, the New York Federal Reserve reported on Friday, Reuters reported. The regional Fed bank's December Global Supply Chain Pressure Index ticked down to 1.18 from November's revised 1.23 reading. According to the report, supply chain pressures have been easing notably since the spring of last year and bottomed in September, and have since then been bouncing around in a tight range.