Headlines

German multinational machinery maker Manz announced from its Reutlingen headquarters on Wednesday that it is to apply for insolvency, DPAInternational reported. The company's executive board took the decision on account of inability to pay its bills and high debts. The application is to be made in the next few days. The company's lenders had decided not to come up with additional funding following intensive talks between the board and investors, it said. The board was continuing to talk to potential investors, it added.

The Bank of England kept its main interest rate unchanged at 4.75% on Thursday but policymakers became more divided about whether rate cuts were needed to tackle a slowing economy, Reuters reported. Three of the BoE's nine-person Monetary Policy Committee - Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden and external members Swati Dhingra and Alan Taylor - voted for a quarter-point rate cut to 4.5%. But BoE Governor Andrew Bailey said the central bank needed to stick to its existing "gradual approach" to cutting rates.

Sweden’s central bank lowered its key interest rate and signaled that borrowing costs could be lowered again next year to support the stuttering economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Riksbank cut its key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 2.50% on Thursday. The move marks a return to more gradual monetary policy easing.

Norway’s central bank held its key policy rate at 4.5% as it pushes on with efforts to bring inflation down, but said it will likely begin monetary policy easing in March, the Wall Street Journal reported. The policy rate has been at 4.5% since December 2023 and has helped to significantly dampen inflation from its peak, but a rapid rise in business costs will likely restrain further disinflation, Norges Bank said.

Taiwan’s central bank maintained interest rates unchanged again, delivering a third consecutive hold as it keeps a watchful eye on inflation and signs of overheating in the housing market, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan) kept its benchmark discount rate at 2.000% on Thursday. It maintained secured and unsecured loan rates at 2.375% and 4.250%, respectively. The Taiwanese central bank attributed the hold to cooling domestic inflation and global economic conditions.

El Salvador reached a deal with the International Monetary Fund after four years of negotiations that were strained by the country’s adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender, Bloomberg News reported. The Central American nation and the Washington-based lender agreed on a $1.4 billion loan program to be disbursed over 40 months, according to a statement by the IMF. In exchange, El Salvador had agreed to adopt measures that will improve its primary balance and help cut its debt-to-GDP ratio.

Just as central bankers around the world were growing more confident that inflation was coming back under control and growth stabilizing, a new economic threat looms: potentially hefty tariffs imposed by President-elect Donald J. Trump, the New York Times reported. It’s too soon to know what policies Mr. Trump will carry out during his second presidential term or how other governments might respond. But central bankers are alert to the risk that global trade tensions will make managing inflation more challenging.

An organization that works to document what happened at a notorious residential school says it’s at risk of going bankrupt by the end of the month unless Canada makes a decision on whether it will fund the group’s work, the Canadian Press reported. The Survivors’ Secretariat, which works to uncover the truth about what happened at the Mohawk Institute, a residential school that operated in Brantford, Ont., also says the ministry of Crown-Indigenous relations is letting down survivors with the delays in processing its applications.

Long feted as the savior of Russia’s economy in the face of sanctions over the war in Ukraine, central bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina is increasingly under attack from officials who say she’s now destroying it with record high interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Nabiullina faces rising criticism within the Russian political and business elite ahead of the bank’s final rate-setting meeting of the year on Friday. Analysts forecast that policymakers may hike the key interest rate to 23% from 21% now, and possibly as high as 24% to curb persistent high inflation.

More insolvencies hit construction than any other sector in the year to November, according to new official figures, ConstrucitonNews.co.uk reported. The latest data from the Insolvency Service revealed that 4,208 construction firms became insolvent in the year to November 2024. It means the sector represented 17 per cent of liquidations, administrations and company voluntary arrangements across England and Wales this year.