Headlines

The key prosecution witness in Germany's biggest post-war fraud trial admitted guilt on Monday in a scam that led to Wirecard's collapse but said the company was a "swindle" from the start, with former chief executive Markus Braun at its core, Reuters reported. Wirecard's downfall two years ago shook the German business establishment, putting politicians who had backed it under intense scrutiny, along with regulators that took years to investigate allegations against the payments company.

Japan has kept interest rates below zero this year, where they have been since 2016, even as other major central banks sharply raise their own, the Wall Street Journal reported. The country now finds itself in a dilemma. Inflation is rising, the yen plummeting, and some economists and corporate executives blame the negative rate policy for eroded competitiveness and undisciplined government spending. All that has put pressure on the Bank of Japan to finally raise rates.

China Evergrande Group's shareholding in its property services unit has fallen to 51.71% from 58.18% after forced selling of pledged shares by a third party, a Hong Kong stock exchange filing showed, Reuters reported. The number of Evergrande Property Services Group shares involved was 700 million, and the drop was the result of steps taken on Dec. 14 to enforce rights to the shares held as security against the embattled property developer, the filing said. The last time pledged shares of Evergrande Property Services were enforced was a year ago, when the group's stake decreased from 60.96%.

Relentlessly rising rents, eight consecutive interest rate hikes, surging living costs and devastating natural disasters over the past few years in Australia have inflamed what was already among the world's least affordable rental markets, Reuters reported. Every state capital city is experiencing a decline in rental affordability this year, according to the annual Rental Affordability Index report published by SGS Economics and Planning.

The number of vacant jobs in Canada fell for the first time since the pandemic, easing from record highs in a possible turning point for the country’s labor market, Bloomberg News reported. Openings fell 3.3% on a seasonally adjusted basis to 959,615 in the third quarter, Statistics Canada reported Monday. That’s probably the first quarterly decline in vacancies in more than two years, though the agency didn’t collect figures in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic.

FTX’s U.S. managers are negotiating with Bahamian authorities to resolve a dispute over access to the failed crypto exchange’s electronic records, lawyers said in a court hearing Friday, following weeks of publicly criticizing each other over the handling of FTX’s collapse, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. FTX Chief Executive John J.

After setting aside almost half a trillion dollars to date tackling its energy crisis, Germany is also poised to take on the risks associated with 216 billion euros ($229 billion) of derivatives built up by energy giant Uniper, Reuters reported. Germany is nationalising Uniper in what is the biggest corporate bailout in the country's history, after Russia's move to choke off gas threw Europe's biggest economy into chaos. Uniper has already booked billions of euros of losses on derivatives, exacerbating a crisis as it rushed to plug the gap left after Russia turned off the taps.

The bankruptcy court has admitted VHM Industries to undergo the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) and appointed Sunil Kumar Agarwal as the interim resolution professional for the Mumbai-based textile manufacturer, the Economic Times of India reported. The decision of the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) came on a petition filed by State Bank of India. The lender had approached the bankruptcy court in 2019 after the company defaulted on dues of more than Rs 221 crore.

The Netherlands expects to borrow 101.5 billion euros ($107.8) on the debt markets next year, the most since 2012, and its funding needs are "extremely uncertain" as much depends on the energy price outlook, the country's debt agency said on Friday, Reuters reported. Around 50 billion euros will be raised from long-term debt, the Dutch State Treasury Agency (DSTA) said. The Netherlands will also sell a new, 20-year green bond, its second bond, in the format that funds environmentally-friendly projects.

The Dutch central bank on Thursday issued a statement saying cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin is operating in the Netherlands without being registered to do so, Reuters. KuCoin is a subsidiary of a Seychelles-registered company called MEK Global Limited, the bank said in a statement. MGL "is acting in violation of the law on preventing money laundering and financing terrorism and offering illegal services," De Nederlandsche Bank said.