Headlines

Negative yields have vanished from the world’s corporate bond market as investors brace for monetary tightening, Bloomberg News reported. Every single note in a Bloomberg index tracking the global investment-grade corporate bond market yielded 0% or more at Friday’s close, calculated using the midpoint between bid and ask prices. It’s a dramatic turnaround from August, when more than $1.5 trillion of debt, most of it in Europe, came with a sub-zero yield.

Mexico's economy is thought to have expanded between January and March for the first time in three quarters, driven by domestic consumption and a rebound in exports, a Reuters survey showed on Monday. Gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to have grown 1.1% in the first quarter from the previous three-month period in seasonally adjusted terms, according to the median forecast of 12 analysts polled. The economy posted no growth in the fourth quarter and shrunk by 0.7% in the third quarter of last year.

The German government is set to hike its inflation forecast for this year to 6.1% due to the impact of the war in Ukraine, up from 3.3% it had forecast in January, according to government document seen by Reuters on Monday. Berlin, which is due to present its spring economic forecasts on Wednesday, sees consumer price growth easing to 2.8% in 2023, the document showed.

German exchange operator Deutsche Boerse raised its full-year targets on Monday as it reported better-than-expected quarterly results thanks to higher trading activity amid Russia's war in Ukraine, Reuters reported. Due to the uncertainty on the market, demand for hedging in almost all asset classes rose and boosted trading volumes especially in index derivatives and commodities including energy and gas products, Deutsche Boerse said. "The first quarter of 2022 was considerably above our expectations," Chief Financial Officer Gregor Pottmeyer said in a statement.

The world’s largest sovereign-wealth fund wants a better explanation and more accountability for recent mishaps at Credit Suisse Group AG, the Wall Street Journal reported. Norges Bank Investment Management, the arm of the Norwegian central bank that operates the nearly $1.3 trillion fund, said Sunday it supports a shareholder proposal for a special audit into the bank’s relationship with Greensill Capital, a financing partner that went bankrupt in March 2021.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday announced the indictment of two Europeans for allegedly conspiring with a recently sentenced American cryptocurrency researcher to help North Korea evade U.S. sanctions, Reuters reported. Alejandro Cao de Benos of Spain, who founded a pro-Pyongyang affinity organization, and Christopher Emms of Britain, a cryptocurrency businessman, were accused of recruiting the researcher Virgil Griffith to illegally provide cryptocurrency and blockchain technology services to North Korea. Both defendants are at large.

Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election on a pro-business, pro-European Union platform, bolstering the bloc in the midst of its worst security crisis in decades, Bloomberg News reported. With counting still under way, projections by France’s five main pollsters put Macron on course to win about 58% of the vote in Sunday’s runoff compared with 42% for Le Pen. The euro rose after the nationalist leader conceded defeat in a speech to her supporters in Paris.

The International Monetary Fund said on Saturday that its staff held "fruitful technical discussions" with Sri Lankan authorities on the crisis-wracked country's request for an IMF-supported loan program this week, Reuters reported. The Fund said in a statement that the discussions included the need for Sri Lanka to implement "a credible and coherent strategy" to restore macroeconomic stability, and to strengthen its social safety net and protect the poor and vulnerable during the current crisis.

In Japan, where prices have been roughly flat for decades, inflation is finally taking off. But unlike the Federal Reserve in the U.S., the Bank of Japan has resolved to keep interest rates low, helping drive a fall in the yen, the Wall Street Journal reported. On Thursday, the Japanese central bank resumed another bond-buying move aimed at keeping a lid on rates. It promised to purchase unlimited quantities of government bonds to cap the yield at 0.25%—less than one-tenth the return on the equivalent U.S. Treasury bonds.

Indonesia’s pile of pandemic-related corporate debt is offering some investors the chance to cherry-pick cheap assets before a government forbearance program runs out next year, Bloomberg News reported. The two-year-old government plan gives creditors and debtors time to resolve billions of dollars worth of loans to companies including airline PT Garuda Indonesia to prevent wholesale bankruptcies from the Covid-induced slump.