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Spanish retail sales fell 0.6% in November from a year earlier on a seasonally and calendar-adjusted basis, after rising 1.0% in October, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said on Thursday, Reuters reported. As shoppers grapple with the rising cost of living exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, food sales in Spain recorded an annual decrease of 3.6% in November, INE said. Meanwhile, sales of other goods grew 0.5% year-on-year.
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The Russian rouble pared losses to gain on Thursday after slumping to an eight-month low against the dollar in early trade, struggling under the weight of expectations that sanctions on Russian oil and gas may limit export revenues, Reuters reported. Despite recovering ground in another volatile session, the rouble has still lost more than 13% to the dollar since a Western price cap on Russian oil exports came into force on Dec. 5. By 0957 GMT, the rouble was 0.8% stronger against the dollar at 71.64 , having earlier touched 72.9175, its weakest since April 27.
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Ministers are urging the chancellor to provide £300m of taxpayers' money to avert the closure of British Steel’s two blast furnaces – a move that would trigger the loss of thousands of industrial jobs in northern England. Sky News has learnt that Grant Shapps, the business secretary, and Michael Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wrote to Jeremy Hunt this month to warn that the demise of British Steel could cost the government up to £1bn in decommissioning and other liabilities.
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Singapore’s recovery held up in 2022, with a relatively strong year-end performance shoring up the economy ahead of an expected global slowdown this year, Bloomberg News reported. Gross domestic product grew 3.8% during the year, according to advance estimates Tuesday from the Ministry of Trade and Industry. That’s a slight beat from the government’s projection for a 3.5% annual expansion. The better-than-forecast performance followed a 2.2% GDP expansion in the three months through December from a year earlier. The economy grew 0.2% last quarter from the previous three months.
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For much of the global economy, 2023 is going to be a tough year as the main engines of global growth - the United States, Europe and China - all experience weakening activity, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Sunday, Reuters reported. The new year is going to be "tougher than the year we leave behind," IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on the CBS Sunday morning news program "Face the Nation." "Why? Because the three big economies - the U.S., EU and China - are all slowing down simultaneously," she said.
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A Swiss court has granted a six-month “stay of bankruptcy” to the operating company for the never-opened Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was built to bring Russian gas to Germany but put on ice shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, ABC News reported. The company's stay was extended from Jan. 10 through July 10 by a regional court in the Swiss canton (state) of Zug, according to a notice published Wednesday in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce. Nord Stream 2 AG, a subsidiary of Russia’s Gazprom, is based in Zug.
Aeromexico has formally completed its chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in the U.S., Simple Flying reported. Last week, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York issued a final decree, closing the chapter 11 cases of the company and its subsidiaries. Although Aeromexico had successfully emerged from the chapter 11 process in March 2022, the case was still open. On Dec. 22, 2022, the court closed the case, considering, among other things, that Aeromexico’s plan of reorganization “has been substantially consummated,” the airline announced in a statement.
Crypto miner Argo Blockchain said on Wednesday it will sell its mining facility Helios for $65 million and refinance a new asset-backed loan as it seeks to avoid bankruptcy, sending its London-listed shares soaring, Reuters reported. Argo, which earlier this month warned that it might have to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection due to insufficient cash, said the deals will allow the company to continue its operations.
The head of Russia's state-controlled airline Aeroflot called on the Russian government to "balance the interests" of Russian and foreign airlines in order to support the domestic aviation sector, in an interview with Russian news site RBC published on Wednesday, Reuters reported. In the interview, Aeroflot CEO Sergei Alexandrovsky said it is "important that the state balances the interests of Russian and international carriers.
ExxonMobil is suing the EU in a bid to force it to scrap the bloc’s new windfall tax on oil groups, arguing Brussels exceeded its legal authority by imposing the levy, the Irish Times reported. The lawsuit is the most significant response yet against the tax from the oil industry, which has been targeted by western governments amid a surge in energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.