Headlines

Germany wants to create a new financial crime authority that would bundle several fragmented competencies, including sanctions enforcement, said a finance ministry paper on Tuesday, Reuters reported. There are currently more than 300 supervisory bodies across Germany, a figure the finance ministry would like to reduce. With the new authority, the finance ministry hopes to make it easier to tackle complex international money laundering cases, which have long been a weak spot for the country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would be willing to consider easing the regulatory burden on new gas export facilities to Europe, while indicating the business case for investments may be a difficult one, Bloomberg News reported. Speaking to reporters in Montreal at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Trudeau said the challenge is that any new liquefied natural gas terminal on Canada’s eastern shore would be far from country’s western gas fields.

Unifin Financiera SAB drove about a fifth of trading in its own stock in the weeks before a collapse that sent shares and about $2.4 billion in bonds from Mexico’s biggest non-bank lender spiraling, Bloomberg News reported. A buyback fund from Unifin spent 12.9 million pesos ($640,00) to buy 800,776 shares from the end of June through Aug. 4, according to stock exchange filings. That’s 22% of the total volume over that period, data complied by Bloomberg show.

Indonesia’s central bank unexpectedly raised borrowing costs for the first time since 2018 as policy makers conceded that inflation pressures have risen, revising their price forecasts higher, Bloomberg News reported. Bank Indonesia raised its seven-day reverse repurchase rate by 25 basis points to 3.75% on Tuesday, a move predicted by only seven of 31 economists in a Bloomberg survey. BI raised its forecasts for headline and core inflation this year and said it sees risks that average price gains could exceed the 2%-4% target not just this year but also in 2023.

Bank of Nova Scotia’s years-long turnaround of its Latin America-focused international unit faced a setback last quarter as the division’s lending margins contracted and non-interest revenue slipped, Bloomberg News reported. The unit’s total revenue came in at C$2.42 billion ($1.86 billion) in the fiscal third quarter, the Toronto-based bank said in a statement Tuesday. While that’s up 2.4% from a year earlier, it trailed analysts’ C$2.54 billion average estimate. Overall profit also missed expectations.

Former Prime Minister Najib Razak was taken to prison after Malaysia’s top court dismissed his final appeal of corruption convictions, capping a yearslong quest by authorities to prosecute him for his role in one of the world’s largest financial scandals, the Wall Street Journal reported. The ruling by Malaysia’s Federal Court on Tuesday upheld Mr. Najib’s guilty verdicts on seven charges including abuse of power, money laundering and criminal breach of trust.

Bengaluru, India-based ShopX has decided to ‘wind down its operations’ and has filed an application for insolvency and bankruptcy under Section 10 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy (IBC) code, 2016, the company said in a Ministry of Corporate (MCA) filing, VCCircle.com reported. The Nandan Nilekani-backed startup said that it defaulted on repayment of interest on loans due to the insufficiency of funds. The company said it took multiple loans from its investors including Nilekani and its Singapore-based backer Fung Investment, without sharing details about the figures.

Turkey's central bank unveiled new measures on Saturday meant to address credit availability including higher reserve requirement collateral for lenders, days after it shocked markets with a 100 basis-point interest rate cut to 13%, Reuters reported. It said that the steps were meant to support financial stability and strengthen the monetary transmission mechanism after citing the need to address the widening gap between its policy rate and lending rates when it cut rates on Thursday.

The Bank of Israel raised its benchmark interest rate on Monday by three-quarters of a percentage point, its biggest hike in two decades, and appeared on track for further increases as it tries to rein in inflation that has topped 5%, Reuters reported. The central bank lifted its key rate to 2.0% from 1.25%, continuing a tightening cycle that began in April when policymakers first raised the rate from 0.1%, an all-time low set at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pakistan's central bank on Monday held its main policy rate at 15%, the bank said in a statement, adding it would closely watch inflation data and global commodity prices, Reuters reported. "Looking ahead, the MPC (monetary policy committee) intends to remain data-dependent, paying close attention to month-on-month inflation ... as well as global commodity prices and interest rate decisions by major central banks," the State Bank said in a statement.