Headlines

Europe’s banking regulator is growing antsy about a booming market for banks: loans that fuel riskier borrowers and the global deal-making machine, the Wall Street Journal reported. That corner of banks’ business, called leveraged financing, has skyrocketed in Europe and elsewhere over the past years as central banks unleashed cheap money to propel economic growth. Although issuance has slowed down this year because of the war in Ukraine, the European Central Bank estimates there are over $4 trillion in such loans outstanding globally.

The employment rate in the European Union climbed back above 2019 levels last year, as the labour market started recovering from the pandemic, the bloc's statistics office said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The share of employed Europeans rose to 73.1% last year from 71.7% in 2020 and 72.7% in 2019, the European Union's statistics office Eurostat said in a statement. "As massive vaccination campaigns started all around the world in 2021, the situation with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic began to improve gradually in the first quarter of 2021," Eurostat said.

Germany has started preparations for a potential halt in Russian gas deliveries as concerns intensify amid a dispute over payment terms, Bloomberg News reported. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Thursday that preparations to limit Germany’s exposure to Russian energy imports were under way even before President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine. While Russian coal is already being phased out, gas is more difficult, he said in Tokyo after talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

German inflation hit its highest level in more than four decades in April, pushed higher by natural gas and mineral oil products that have significantly increased in price since Russia's attack on Ukraine, Reuters reported. Consumer prices, harmonised to make them comparable with inflation data from other European Union countries (HICP), rose an annual 7.8%, a rise from March's 7.6%, the Federal Statistics Office said on Thursday. The inflation reading from Germany, the biggest euro zone economy, precedes data on Friday for the whole 19-country bloc.

Indonesia widened the scope of its export ban on raw materials for cooking oil to include crude and refined palm oil, its chief economic minister said on Wednesday, leaving markets in shock over the latest policy reversal, Reuters reported. The announcement flipped the minister's statement a day earlier, in which he had said the export ban would only cover refined, bleached, and deodorized palm olein. The change was "in line with the president's decision and after taking into account the feedback and views from the people," Airlangga Hartarto said in a short statement.

The Cuban central bank issued regulations on Tuesday for virtual asset service providers, after giving a nod last year to the personal use of cryptocurrencies, a move some experts said could help the Communist-run Caribbean island skirt stiff U.S. sanctions, Reuters reported. Cryptocurrencies, which allow financial operations to be carried out anonymously in a decentralized manner, have been used in the past to get around capital controls, as well as to make payments and transfers more efficient.

Investors who buy the depositary receipts (GDRs) of Russian-companies that were traded on foreign exchanges in order to swap them into shares will be unable to sell the shares quickly, Russia's central bank said in a statement on Wednesday, Reuters reported. A law that came into effect this month requires Russian companies to delist their depositary receipts from foreign bourses and convert them into local securities in a bid to reduce foreign control.

Russian natural gas deliveries to Austria are continuing unrestricted and there is no indication that will change, its government said on Wednesday while adding it is scrambling to find alternative sources, Reuters reported. Austria obtains 80% of its natural gas from Russia, a heavy dependency that it says will take time to end now that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has made plain the need to shift away from Europe's cheapest source of gas. "Since the start of the war delivery volumes have not changed. In fact, they have increased," Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer told a news conference.

Germany is preparing for a change of control at the PCK refinery in Schwedt operated by Russian state-owned Rosneft (ROSN.MM) that accounts for all of Germany's remaining Russian oil imports, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Germany has set out plans to become independent of Russian oil, which would make a European Union oil embargo manageable for Europe's biggest economy. It has reduced the proportion of oil it sources from Russia to 12% from 35%, leaving PCK the only remaining consumer of Russian oil in the country.

Singapore authorities aim to conclude their probe of commodity trader Noble Group Ltd. and its subsidiary for potential breaches by the third quarter, with investigations now at an advanced stage, Bloomberg News reported. The investigations -- which have been ongoing since November 2018 -- involve suspected disclosure-related offenses, according to the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s enforcement report published on Wednesday.