Headlines

U.K. finance chiefs finally know what’s coming: Higher taxes, the Wall Street Journal reported. Faced with a weaker currency, rising financing costs and surging inflation, finance executives’ already fraught budget planning was upended earlier this fall after the country’s government announced sharp, debt-funded tax cuts, only to withdraw them after the pound tumbled to a 37-year low and financial markets gyrated. Now, under a new prime minister, the government is pledging fiscal austerity, accompanied by an increase in the corporate tax rate to 25%.

European banks are snapping up large pieces of their own collateralized loan obligations, keeping the market for CLOs afloat in the absence of the US and Japanese banks that traditionally make up the bulk of the buyer base, Bloomberg News reported. French bank Societe Generale SA arranged its first CLOs since the Global Financial Crisis in November, and then following an example by Deutsche Bank AG earlier in the year, it also played a key role in getting the deals out the door by purchasing a chunk of the AAA -- or safest -- bonds.

Developing nations are facing a catastrophic debt crisis in the coming months as rapid inflation, slowing growth, rising interest rates and a strengthening dollar coalesce into a perfect storm that could set off a wave of messy defaults and inflict economic pain on the world’s most vulnerable people, the New York Times reported. Poor countries owe, by some calculations, as much as $200 billion to wealthy nations, multilateral development banks and private creditors.

Chinese hackers have stolen tens of millions of dollars worth of U.S. COVID relief benefits since 2020, the Secret Service said on Monday, Reuters reported. The Secret Service declined to provide any additional details but confirmed a report by NBC News that said that the Chinese hacking team that is reportedly responsible is known within the security research community as APT41 or Winnti. APT41 is a prolific cybercriminal group that had conducted a mix of government-backed cyber intrusions and financially motivated data breaches, according to experts.

After winning over some of the biggest retirement plans in the US, private credit managers have found new fertile ground for their investment pitch: Australia’s $2.3 trillion pension industry, Bloomberg News reported. Four of the top-10 pensions Down Under -- Australian Retirement Trust, HostPlus, UniSuper and Colonial First State -- are making significant increases to their private credit allocations, according to recent statements and interviews with Bloomberg News. AustralianSuper, the nation’s largest, is midway into a three-year push to triple its allocation.

Next Plc has bought UK retailer Joules Group Plc out of insolvency for £34 million ($41.5 million), winning a bidding war against rival store owners, Bloomberg News reported. The clothing and housewares retailer has teamed up with Joules founder Tom Joule to snap up the chain, which fell into administration on Nov. 16. The maker of colorful coats and Wellington boots had failed to secure bridge financing or raise equity, after warning that it would struggle to repay a £5 million loan due at the end of November.

OPEC+ said Sunday it would lock in current production levels, a pause that suggests the word’s leading oil producers are uncertain about the direction of crude prices with a price cap on Russia’s petroleum exports set to take effect, the Wall Street Journal reported. The decision on Sunday allows the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and a group of producers led by Russia—collectively known as OPEC+—to take more time to assess the market impact of an EU and Group of Seven price cap, which is intended to crimp Russia’s revenue for the Ukraine war.

India has decided to extend the deadline on capping the share of digital payment transactions by about two years to Dec. 31, 2024, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said on Friday, Reuters reported. The NPCI had said in late 2020 that payment firms will not be allowed to process more than 30% of the total volume of transactions on UPI from Jan 1. The move comes as a breather to companies like Walmart Inc's PhonePe and Alphabet Inc's Google, which are among the leading digital money transfer apps in the country.

India’s central bank will launch its first pilot of a digital rupee for individual users Thursday, putting it ahead of many major economies in the journey toward a sovereign virtual currency, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Reserve Bank of India has said a digital rupee could provide Indians a safe alternative to risky private digital currencies. Central banks globally have been exploring the possibility of issuing a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, as cryptocurrencies have gained favor with the public.