Headlines

Russia's top lender Sberbank is developing fully domestic cloud infrastructure, it said on Friday, after reporting issues with some 'smart home' device functionality due to problems with its foreign cloud partner, Reuters reported. The state-owned lender, which fell under Western sanctions imposed over Russia's actions in Ukraine, has been developing its non-financial businesses, including technology and cloud services, in an attempt to combat the industry-wide trend of shrinking margins.

A Singapore court has charged 47-year-old U.K. national James Henry O’Sullivan with two additional counts of allegedly abetting falsification of documents, according to local police, Bloomberg News reported. O’Sullivan allegedly helped Singaporean businessman R. Shanmugaratnam to falsify documents and issue letters that falsely claimed certain amounts of money were held in a bank under escrow, the Singapore Police Force said Thursday in a statement on its website.

Sri Lanka’s president declared a state of emergency Friday giving him broad authority amid widespread public protests demanding his resignation over the country’s worst economic crisis in recent memory, the Associated Press reported. The decree issued by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa invokes sections of the Public Security Ordinance that allow him to make regulations in the interests of public security, the preservation of public order, the suppression of mutiny, riot or civil commotion, or for the maintenance of essential supplies.

Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa has imposed capital controls in an attempt to control the currency’s rapid depreciation, Bloomberg News reported. The Zimbabwean dollar has lost half of its value this year making it Africa’s worst performing currency. Banks in the country have been ordered to stop lending with immediate effect “to minimize the creation of broad money that is prone to abuse for purposes of manipulating the exchange rate,” Mnangagwa said in a televised speech.

Convenience retailer McColl’s has announced it has entered into administration after its lenders said it did not want to extend banking agreements that were keeping the business going, Credit Strategy reported. PwC has been appointed as administrators, with the professional services firm intending to sell the business to a third-party purchaser "as soon as possible". Following this announcement, Sky News has reported that Asda’s co-owners the Issa brothers are expected to agree a deal to purchase the firm which would rescue "the bulk of the company".

Former German tennis star Boris Becker could be deported from Britain in the wake of his conviction for violating the Insolvency Act, UPI.com reported. Becker was sentenced to two years and six months in prison for hiding millions of pounds worth of assets during a bankruptcy. He could be deported because British law allows for any foreign national convicted of a crime and given a prison sentence to be considered for deportation. Becker was charged with hiding more than $3 million in assets after filing for bankruptcy in 2017.

A business group warned on Thursday that China’s “dynamic zero Covid” policies have left European companies considerably less willing to continue investing in the country, the New York Times reported. A survey by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China found that the tone among European businesses in the country had soured since January, when a survey found broad optimism and plans for further investment.

Sri Lanka remains deep in the throes of a balance of payments crisis that has crippled the country’s ability to import necessities and make payments on its over $30 billion in foreign debts, Sri Lanka’s finance minister said, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. “Right now if you look at our usable liquid reserves, [they] are running next to zero, we just don’t have it,” the South Asian nation’s finance minister, Ali Sabry, said in an interview.

The Russian rouble briefly reached its highest level against the dollar since March 2020 on Thursday, supported by capital controls, while stock indexes also climbed as the market watched developments around possible new sanctions against Moscow, Reuters reported. The volatile currency hit a high of 65.31 per dollar in early trading on the Moscow Exchange but by 1339 GMT was at 66.14, which was 0.2% stronger than its Wednesday closing level. The morning peak level had not been seen since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic.

The Bank of England sent a stark warning that Britain risks a double-whammy of a recession and inflation above 10% as it raised interest rates on Thursday to their highest since 2009, hiking by quarter of a percentage point to 1%, Reuters reported. The pound fell by more than a cent against the U.S. dollar to hit its lowest level since mid-2020, below $1.24, as the gloominess of the BoE's new forecasts for the world's fifth-largest economy caught investors by surprise. They also trimmed bets on the central bank hiking rates aggressively this year.