Headlines

Russia rushed forward two payments on its international debt on Friday in its latest attempt to stave off a default that has looked on cards since its invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported. A week before the interest payments are due and just five days before a key U.S. waiver allowing such transfers expires, Russia's finance ministry said it had wired $71.25 million for a dollar-denominated bond and 26.5 million euros ($28 million) for euro-denominated notes.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said crypto-currencies are “based on nothing” and should be regulated to steer people away from speculating on them with their life savings, Bloomberg News reported. Lagarde told Dutch television that she’s concerned about people “who have no understanding of the risks, who will lose it all and who will be terribly disappointed, which is why I believe that that should be regulated.” The comments come amid choppy times for crypto markets, with digital currencies Bitcoin and Ether down 50% from last year’s peak.

Lebanon's government foresees cancelling "a large part" of the Central Bank's foreign currency obligations to commercial banks and dissolving non-viable banks by November, according to a financial recovery plan passed by the cabinet on Friday, Reuters reported. The document, seen by Reuters and verified as accurate by a minister, was passed by cabinet in its final session hours before losing decision-making powers, following the election of a new parliament on May 15.

Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Friday defended the central bank as inflation spikes to a three-decade high and the frontrunner to take over the opposition Conservative Party pledges to fire the Bank of Canada governor if elected, Reuters reported. "It is clear to us all that we are living through a period of global volatility. We have COVID. We have the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We have China's zero-COVID policy," Freeland told reporters by teleconference from Munich, Germany after a G7 meeting.

Turkey’s gross foreign-currency reserves fell the most this year, providing further evidence that an effort to support the lira is coming at an increasingly steep cost, Bloomberg News reported. The stockpile shrank by $4.8 billion in the seven days ended May 13, according to central bank figures published on Friday. That brought total holdings, which exclude gold reserves, to a 10-month low of $61.2 billion.

Having long trod a similar path in tackling low inflation, Japan and Europe now appear to be taking contrasting approaches to monetary policy and the risks of rising prices, which drew warnings at this week's Group of Seven gathering in Germany, Reuters reported. Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda repeated his dovish mantra on Friday, saying the recent cost-push inflation will be short-lived and will not warrant withdrawing stimulus.

The European Union’s executive arm moved Wednesday to jump-start plans for the 27-nation bloc to abandon Russian energy amid the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, proposing a nearly 300 billion-euro ($315 billion) package that includes more efficient use of fuels and faster rollout of renewable power, the Associated Press reported. The European Commission’s investment initiative is meant to help the 27 EU countries start weaning themselves off Russian fossil fuels this year.

The Russian economy expanded by 3.5% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2022 after growing 5% in the previous quarter, data from federal statistics service Rosstat showed on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The first quarter is expected to have been the last with sound growth before the Russian economy took a hit from sweeping sanctions for Moscow's decision to send tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The European Union will not give a new mandate to renegotiate post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland agreed as part of the Brexit deal, the bloc's ambassador to London said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Britain is lining up a new law that would effectively override parts of a Brexit deal and has said that the bloc's refusal to budge on its negotiating mandate for the talks is "hugely disappointing". Speaking at an event in Westminster, the EU ambassador, João Vale de Almeida, said that the EU would stick to its existing mandate for the talks with Britain.

Too many global investment banks continue to serve euro zone clients out of London and the European Central Bank plans to force them to relocate senior staff and trading activity to the bloc, ECB supervisory chief Andrea Enria said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The ECB has long battled the industry's biggest players, who are reluctant to relocate activities after Brexit, despite explicit demands by the ECB, which supervises the bloc's biggest financial institutions.