Headlines

Financial firms in the European Union will have to show how quickly they could recover from a cyber attack as they rely more for key services on 'cloud computing' giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM, the EU said on Monday, Reuters reported. Regulators worry about the speed and scale at which banks, insurers and investment firms are moving critical functions and market operations onto a handful of cloud platforms. A glitch at one cloud company could potentially bring down services across many financial firms, regulators have said.

Euro zone inflation has not peaked and the risk is that it will turn out even higher than currently expected, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Monday, Reuters reported. "We do not see the components or the direction that would lead me to believe that we've reached peak inflation and that it's going to decline in short order," Lagarde told the European Parliament. "Whenever I ask my top-notch economists at the ECB ...

Protests are erupting in major cities in China over President Xi Jinping’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19, an unusual show of defiance in the country as the economic and social costs from snap lockdowns and other strict restrictions escalate, the Wall Street Journal reported. Demonstrations occurred throughout the weekend in both Beijing and Shanghai. According to eyewitness accounts, there were also protests in the eastern city of Nanjing and in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic.

A broad measure of Brazilian consumer and business credit default ratios rose in October to its highest level in almost four years, central bank data showed on Monday, amid high borrowing costs and aggressive monetary tightening, Reuters reported. The default ratio in non-earmarked loans increased to 4.2% from 4.1% in September, the highest since August 2018's 4.22%. At the same time, bank lending spreads were up to 30.3% from 28.6% the month before.

Pemberton Asset Management is fast-tracking plans to triple the size of its private debt funds and plug a European lending gap being created by increasingly skittish banks, Bloomberg News reported. The $17 billion investment firm is in the process of raising capital for five credit strategies, which include lending on mid-market buyouts, Founder and Managing Partner Symon Drake-Brockman said in an interview. “We are aiming to become a $50 billion manager in the European marketplace over the next five years,” Drake-Brockman said.

Collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX remains the subject of "an active and ongoing investigation" by Bahamian authorities, Bahamian Attorney General Ryan Pinder said on Sunday, as he praised the Bahamas' regulatory regime and swiftness with which it responded to the crisis, Reuters reported. FTX, which had been among the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is headquartered in the Bahamas. The firm, whose liquidity crunch forced the company to declare bankruptcy on Nov. 11, is the subject of investigations by Bahamian and U.S. authorities.

User assets at the Japanese arm of FTX Trading have stayed safely apart from the rest of the collapsing cryptocurrency exchange group, and "we're working toward returning them as our top priority," FTX Japan Chief Operations Officer Seth Melamed told Nikkei on Tuesday. Withdrawals at FTX Japan remain halted amid the turmoil engulfing Bahamas-based parent FTX Trading, which is undergoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. The Japanese company has roughly 19 billion yen ($134 million) in user assets, including dormant accounts.

Crypto mogul Changpeng “CZ” Zhao’s vow to set up a recovery fund of up to $2 billion to help cash-strapped startups failed to dispel all the sector’s contagion fears following the collapse of the FTX exchange, Bloomberg News reported. In an interview Thursday with Bloomberg Television’s Haslinda Amin, Zhao gave more details on the deals his Binance Holdings Ltd. is examining in the wake of rival FTX’s bankruptcy. Key to Zhao’s plan is a fund with co-investors aimed at backing promising crypto projects facing a liquidity squeeze.

More than two out of every five (41%) established small and medium businesses (those with between 10 and 100 employees) across the UK expect to shut their doors permanently, be forced to conduct mass redundancies or close locations within the next 12 months, the Business Leader reported. And more than one in three (39%) fear their business will be fatally or critically impacted by any forthcoming recession, while a similar number (43%) say they will have to borrow money just to keep their business afloat or refinance existing debt (37%).

South Korea should avoid following Japan’s lead of using fiscal and monetary stimulus to combat the challenges of an aging economy, central bank Governor Rhee Chang-yong said, urging reforms instead to boost fertility, Bloomberg News reported. Aging is a rising concern in the developed world and Korea is among the hardest-hit together with Japan. South Korea shattered its own record for the world’s lowest fertility rate last year, adding to long-term pressure on policy makers to keep interest rates low and fiscal stimulus ample to boost growth.