Headlines

Potential investors in Thames Water will have to submit new bids for the water utility by Feb. 10, Bloomberg News reported. The highly indebted company told bidders to take industry regulator Ofwat’s December ruling about the scope for bill increases and investor returns into account for their submissions. Thames Water has been looking to raise at least £3.3 billion ($4.1 billion) in new equity after its existing shareholders declared the business “uninvestible” and kicked off a formal bidding process.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Wednesday, reserved its order on the appeals by Glas Trust and Aditya Birla Finance to be added to the committee of creditors (CoC), as well as the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) application to withdraw its insolvency petition against the cash-strapped edtech firm Byju's, the Economic Times of India reported.

Backpack Exchange, a crypto trading platform founded by one-time employees of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and Alameda Research businesses, has acquired the former European entity of the failed FTX exchange for $32.7 million to expand its derivatives offerings in the region, Bloomberg News reported. FTX EU was one of the business units that ended up as part of the bankruptcy after Bankman-Fried’s firm collapsed in 2022.

Euro zone households could keep saving a large portion of their income to rebuild wealth lost to high inflation, the European Central Bank argued, suggesting lacklustre consumption will continue to weigh on growth in the near term, Reuters reported. European families are sitting on an ever-growing pile of savings, confounding hopes that consumer largesse will kickstart the region's stagnant economy.

There is “significant uncertainty” about the ability of weaker UK home owners whose debt was bundled into residential mortgage-backed securities to repay the principal when the loans mature, according to Fitch Ratings, Bloomberg News reported. Sharp rises in mortgage rates have led to a spike in so-called nonconforming borrowers failing to make their full monthly payments. In an index of those home loans tracked by the ratings agency, arrears of one month or more surged 11.1 percentage points to 24.2% from December 2021 through November 2024.

The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday it will share $50 million in forfeited assets with Estonia in recognition of Estonia's assistance in the successful prosecution of Danske Bank and related forfeiture, Reuters reported. The bank became the subject of several investigations after an internal probe in September 2018 uncovered about 200 billion euros ($207 billion) of payments made through its now-shuttered Estonian branch, with many payments appearing suspicious.

Australian building approvals were weaker than expected in November, denting hopes of a big recovery in housing supply to meet surging immigration, the Wall Street Journal reported. The total number of dwellings approved fell 3.6% in November to 14,998, following a 5.2% rise in October, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday. Economists had expected approvals to drop 0.9% over the month.

Chile’s consumer prices fell last month for the first time since June, giving the central bank only limited relief as it monitors inflationary threats including higher electricity tariffs and a weak currency, Bloomberg News reported. Prices fell 0.2% in December, below all forecasts in a Bloomberg survey of analysts that had a median estimate of no change. Annual inflation accelerated to 4.5%, the national statistics institute reported on Wednesday. Central bankers led by Rosanna Costa have cut borrowing costs by 6.25 percentage points since mid-2023 to the current level of 5%.

Brazil’s industrial output fell for the second straight month, signaling that tight financial conditions are taking toll on the credit-dependent sector as the central bank prepares to take interest rates even higher, Bloomberg News reported. Production declined 0.6% in November from the month prior, just less than the median estimate of a 0.7% drop from analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Industry gained 1.7% from a year earlier, the national statistics agency reported Wednesday. Read more.

Northvolt AB is asking for shareholder approval to keep building battery cells while the bankrupt electric-vehicle supplier seeks the new funding needed to emerge from chapter 11 protection, Bloomberg News reported. The extraordinary general meeting scheduled for Wednesday at Northvolt’s Stockholm headquarters is billed as a “procedural step” by the company. The gathering, announced in December, is required when equity falls below one-half of registered share capital, spokesman Martin Hofelmann said in an email.