Headlines

A group of countries including Poland, Italy and Greece have drafted a proposal for the European Union to introduce a "dynamic price corridor" for gas, in a bid to pull down high energy prices and soaring inflation, Reuters reported. "The corridor would apply to all wholesale transactions, not limited to import from specific jurisdictions and not limited to specific use of natural gas," said a draft of the countries' proposal, seen by Reuters.

British businesses' expectations for consumer price inflation in one year's time rose to 9.5% last month, up from 8.4% in August, a Bank of England survey showed on Thursday, Reuters reported. The BoE's Decision Maker Panel survey of chief financial officers also showed that businesses expected output prices to rise by 6.6% in the year ahead, up from expectations of 6.5% in August. The survey was conducted between Sept. 2 and 16 and received 2,522 responses. Read more.

The Biden administration is preparing to scale down sanctions on Venezuela’s authoritarian regime to allow Chevron Corp. to resume pumping oil there, paving the way for a potential reopening of U.S. and European markets to oil exports from Venezuela, the Wall Street Journal reported. In exchange for the significant sanctions relief, the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would resume long-suspended talks with the country’s opposition to discuss conditions needed to hold free and fair presidential elections in 2024, the people said.

Late one Saturday night in April 2021, a Mexico City-based payroll lender proved Alexis Panton right, Bloomberg News reported. A year into the pandemic, Panton, who was then a debt strategist in New York for Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., had been snarkily warning that the math underlying Crédito Real SAB de CV didn’t add up. Hedge funds and big banks had ignored him, instead backing the company, a rising star of Mexico’s shadow banking industry that borrowed cash from big-time foreign investors and cut smaller loans to low-income people and businesses.

When Suriname couldn’t make its debt payments, a Chinese state bank seized the money from one of the South American country’s accounts, the New York Times reported. As Pakistan has struggled to cope with a devastating flood that has inundated a third of the country, its loan repayments to China have been rising fast. When Kenyans and Angolans went to the polls in presidential elections in August, the countries’ Chinese loans, and how to repay them, were a hot-button political issue.

The Swiss National Bank is following the situation at Credit Suisse closely, SNB Governing Board member Andrea Maechler told Reuters on Wednesday. Switzerland's second-biggest bank saw its shares slide by as much as 11.5% and its bonds hit record lows on Monday, before clawing back some of the losses, amid concerns about its ability to restructure its business without asking investors for more money. "We are monitoring the situation," Maechler said on the sidelines of an event in Zurich.

The derivatives-based investment strategy that tipped the U.K.’s pension sector into crisis started with good intentions: Help companies fulfill promises they made to employees to pay a steady income through retirement, the Wall Street Journal reported. Behind the push into that strategy, say pension trustees and their advisers, was the Pensions Regulator, the U.K.’s powerful watchdog, charged with safeguarding the savings of millions of private-sector workers. The regulator steered private pension funds to adopt liability-driven investments, known as LDIs, linked to returns on U.K.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will impress upon EU leaders meeting this week the need for a gas price cap and to ensure any financial support measures allow fair competition, Reuters reported. EU governments have debated a gas price cap for weeks, without reaching agreement. While a majority of EU members support some form of cap, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands are opposed, citing concerns over security of supply.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has dismissed a petition filed by around 368 homebuyers who had purchased properties from Lavasa Corporation, the Economic Times of India reported. The petition had alleged misconduct in the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) of the company and mistreatment of the homebuyers as a class of creditors.

A smaller-than-anticipated rate hike in Australia has fueled talk that global monetary tightening will slow as the growth outlook turns, Reuters reported. For some, the debate is premature with the likes of the U.S. Federal Reserve unlikely to ease up on the brakes until inflation shows clear signs of slowing.