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Germany's foreign ministry plans to tighten the rules for companies deeply exposed to China, making them disclose more information and possibly conduct stress tests for geopolitical risks, a confidential draft document seen by Reuters said. The proposed measures are part of a new business strategy towards China being drawn up by Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government as it seeks to reduce its dependency on Asia's economic superpower.
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S&P Global Ratings expects South Africa’s government to fulfill its commitments to investors in Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. as it finalizes a plan to tackle the state-owned utility’s massive debt burden, Bloomberg News reported. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said last month the government may shift between one-third and two-thirds of the power company’s debt of about 400 billion rand ($23.2 billion) onto its own balance sheet and attach strict conditions to the relief. Details, including the quantum and terms, of the transfer are expected to be announced in February’s budget.
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The end of the era of cheap money has revived a rare phenomenon in UK real estate: valuations are dropping even as rents rise, Bloomberg News reported. Landlords including Land Securities Group Plc, British Land Co., and Great Portland Estates Plc reported rising rents for their offices, warehouses and even stores this week but it wasn’t enough to prevent them writing down valuations. Its a reflection of the degree to which the sector is being battered by rising interest rates, which have overwhelmed the typical interaction of supply and demand.
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Superdry Plc is seeking to tap investment funds to repay banks on a loan due in January as the cost of living crisis hits consumer spending, Bloomberg News reported. The London-listed clothing company has been sounding out potential new investors to replace an asset-backed facility worth £70 million ($83 million), according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the talks are private. The company said that it’s in “positive ongoing discussions with lenders” when contacted by Bloomberg News, reiterating what it said in a quarterly report published last month.
Latin American governments on Sunday selected Brazilian economist Ilan Goldfajn to lead the region’s largest development bank in the wake of a misconduct probe that led to the firing of the previous president, the Associated Press reported. Governors from the Inter-American Development Bank’s 48 members selected Goldfajn to lead the Washington-based multilateral lender from a slate of five candidates nominated by Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Trinidad & Tobago.
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FTX’s investors are continuing to deal with the fallout from the cryptocurrency exchange’s bankruptcy. In a statement today, Temasek, the investment firm owned by Singapore’s government, said it wrote down its full investment in FTX, “irrespective of the outcome of FTX’s bankruptcy protection filing,” TechCrunch.com reported. Temasek invested $210 million USD in FTX international, giving it a minority stake of about 1%. It also invested $65 million for a minority stake of about 1.5% in FTX US, in two funding rounds from October 2021 to January 2022.
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The Securities Commission of The Bahamas said on Thursday it has ordered all digital assets of FTX Digital Markets Ltd (FDM) transferred to a digital wallet controlled by the Commission for safekeeping, Reuters reported. "Urgent interim regulatory action was necessary to protect the interests of clients and creditors of FDM," the commission said in a statement. Read more.
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El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has pledged to buy Bitcoin at a pace of one coin per day starting Friday, November 8, Tokenistcom reported. The move comes as the flagship cryptocurrency has tumbled to two-year lows amid the recent collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. In a Thursday tweet, President Nayib Bukele announced that they will start buying one BTC per day. “We are buying one Bitcoin every day starting tomorrow,” he said. However, the Bitcoin bull did not identify a cap for how many BTC coins he plans to acquire or for how long they will stick to the strategy.
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China dialed down its short-term cash injections to the banking system, as the government bond market steadied following this week’s steep losses, Bloomberg News reported. The People’s Bank of China added a net 9 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) of seven-day liquidity via its open-market operations, compared with 123 billion yuan on Thursday, after a rare selloff in the onshore bond market spooked fixed-income investors. The yield on 10-year bonds climbed two basis points to 2.82% as of 9:33 a.m. local time. It fell four basis points Thursday.
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Japan’s inflation hit its fastest clip in 40 years in October, an outcome that puts the central bank in an even more awkward position as it tries to explain the need to stick with monetary stimulus to pursue stable price growth, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices excluding fresh food climbed 3.6% in October from a year ago, with the acceleration driven by processed food and the fading impact of mobile phone fee cuts, the internal affairs ministry reported Friday. The reading outpaced a 3.5% forecast by analysts and marks the fastest price growth since 1982.
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