Headlines

Scandal-hit Malaysian state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad said on Monday it has filed a legal claim of more than $1 billion against corporate services provider Amicorp Group and its CEO, alleging the firm knowingly facilitated over $7 billion in fraudulent transactions, Reuters reported.

Swedish electric-vehicle battery maker Northvolt said on Friday it expects to line up additional bankruptcy financing by late January after engaging with over 100 lenders and potential investors, Reuters reported. Northvolt entered bankruptcy on Nov. 21 with a $100-million bankruptcy loan from Swedish truck maker Scania, a shareholder and its biggest customer. But that loan was not intended to carry Northvolt through its entire bankruptcy restructuring, and the company has continued to evaluate proposals for additional financing from strategic and financial investors.

The U.K. economy stagnated in the previous quarter in a blow to the government’s hopes for growth, the Wall Street Journal reported. Gross domestic product flatlined between July and September, according to data set out Monday by the Office for National Statistics. The ONS had previously estimated growth of 0.1% over the third quarter. Growth in the preceding quarter was also a little lower than previously calculated, the agency said. “The economy was weaker in the second and third quarters of this year than our initial estimates suggested,” ONS statistics director Liz McKeown said.

The Canadian economy appeared to lose its strength toward the end of this year even as the central bank cut interest rates at a rapid pace, Bloomberg News reported. Advance data suggested gross domestic product shrank 0.1% in November, the first monthly contraction this year, after 0.3% expansion a month earlier, Statistics Canada said Monday. With October’s stronger-than-expected gain and November’s decline, the industry-based data point to the economy growing at a 1.7% annualized pace in the final quarter, assuming December growth is flat.

Argentina’s economy expanded more than expected in October, continuing to show signs of recovery after surpassing growth forecasts in the third quarter too, Bloomberg News reported. Economic activity rose 0.6% from September, more than the 0.2% median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. From a year ago, activity fell 0.7%, according to government data published Friday. Wages in Argentina also grew 4.6% in October from September, surpassing monthly inflation for the seventh straight month after price increases wiped out paychecks earlier in the year.

A group of Indian lenders has asked the central bank to approve a new benchmark for overnight indexed swaps, Bloomberg News reported. The banks want the swaps to reference the newly-proposed Secured Overnight Rupee Rate (SORR) instead of the prevailing Mumbai Interbank Outright Rate (MIBOR). The move is intended to improve price discovery in the interest-rate swap market, an opaque but important part of the financial system that helps banks and corporations manage their risks. An industry body reached out to banks this month to start work on the formulation of the SORR, the people said.

After complaints by billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego’s companies, prosecutors in Mexico have been seeking the arrest of family members associated with what was one of the country’s biggest shadow banks, Bloomberg News reported. Almudena Lebois, a former board member of Unifin Financiera SAB and daughter of the founder, was arrested late last week on charges of attempted fraud before a state of Mexico judge dismissed the case. Court records show the charges were sparked by allegations from a company owned by Salinas.

Singapore's key consumer price gauge rose 1.9% in November on a yearly basis, lower than economists' forecasts and the smallest rise in nearly three years, official data showed on Monday, Reuters reported. It was the smallest rise since November 2021, when it climbed by 1.6%. Headline inflation was 1.6% in annual terms in November. The Monetary Authority of Singapore had forecast core inflation to be around 2% in the fourth quarter.

Honda and Nissan said that they planned to merge in 2026, a move Honda’s chief executive said wasn’t a rescue of troubled Nissan but a recognition that developing new technologies was too hard to do alone, the Wall Street Journal reported. The companies said that they intended to create an automaker that, combined with Nissan partner Mitsubishi Motors, would be the third-largest carmaker in the world, after Toyota and Volkswagen, with more than eight million vehicles sold annually.

Atos said that it completed its financial restructuring, resulting in a more sustainable capital structure and much-needed liquidity for the beleaguered group, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The French IT company on Thursday said that the implementation of the transactions in its safeguard plan reduced its gross debt by 2.1 billion euros ($2.17 billion). It now has 1.6 billion euros in new money debt and around 145 million euros of new money equity from a rights issue and an additional reserved capital increase.