Headlines

The European Union must discuss an import ban on Russian gas deliveries after Ukrainian and European officials accused Russian forces of committing atrocities near Kyiv, the German defence ministry said on Sunday, Reuters reported. "There has to be a response. Such crimes must not remain without a response," the ministry quoted Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht as saying in an interview.

The eurozone’s inflation rate jumped to another record high in March as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed energy and food prices higher, increasing pressure on the European Central Bank to raise its key interest rate, the Wall Street Journal reported. Russia accounts for around 40% of the European Union’s imports of natural gas, a key source of energy for the bloc. It also supplies around a quarter of the bloc’s oil imports. While supplies of oil and gas have continued to flow from Russia into Europe, market prices have risen, reflecting worries about future availability.

The Bank of Japan should pay close attention to currency levels because its efforts to hold down interest rates are weakening the yen, according to a senior member of the Japanese ruling coalition party Komeito, Bloomberg News reported. “From the point of view of the economy, I understand why they are holding down interest rates,” said Keiichi Ishii, secretary general of Komeito, the junior partner to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. “But the side effects of that are reflected in exchange rates,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg News in Tokyo on Friday.

A company accused by German authorities of supplying authoritarian countries such as Turkey, Egypt and Myanmar with trojan software that could be used to eavesdrop on dissidents has shut down operations and filed for insolvency, the Bloomberg reported. FinFisher GmbH sold spyware to law enforcement and intelligence agencies that allows users to access address books, chat messages, photographs and videos on targeted smartphones as well as listen in on telephone conversations.

The man behind Tauranga's failed Bella Vista development is fighting a New Zealand High Court challenge to declare him bankrupt, promising the court he has a plan to pay back a $1 million debt to a building materials supplier, the New Zealand Herald reported. Danny Cancian, former director of the now-liquidated Bella Vista Homes company, shed tears as he appeared via audio-visual link in the High Court at Tauranga yesterday. The 21-home Bella Vista development in The Lakes was evacuated by Tauranga City Council in 2018 over claims of construction deficiencies.

Sri Lanka's government imposed a weekend curfew on Saturday, even as hundreds of lawyers urged President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to revoke a state of emergency introduced following unrest over fuel and other shortages in a deep economic crisis, Reuters reported. The government's information department said a countrywide curfew would run from 6 p.m. (1230 GMT) on Saturday to 6 a.m. (0030 GMT) on Monday. Rajapaksa introduced a state of emergency on Friday, raising fears of a crackdown on protests.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Thursday that Moscow would impose a moratorium on bankruptcies for a period of six months starting on Friday, Reuters reported. Read more.

Investors are bracing for more losses in Russian debt as expulsion from key indexes in the wake of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine hits an already trampled market, Bloomberg News reported. Russia’s government and corporate bonds are set on Thursday to be removed from the closely-followed JPMorgan Chase & Co. suite of emerging-market bond indexes, known as EMBI, leaving some money managers whose funds track the gauge with little choice but to sell or write down their holdings.

Inflation continued to surge across Europe's biggest economies this month while growth took a hit, leaving households poorer as they picked up the bill for soaring energy costs in the wake of Russia's shock invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported. Price growth hit multi-decade highs in Italy, France, Germany and Spain in March, intensifying a policy dilemma for the European Central Bank, which needs to fight the price surge but must also avoid choking off already fading growth.

A proposed multi-billion pound claim brought by thousands of asset managers, pension funds and financial institutions against major banks over alleged foreign exchange (forex) rigging has been blocked by a London court, Reuters reported. London's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), which had been considering the case against JPMorgan, Citigroup, Barclays, UBS and NatWest since last July, ruled on Thursday the case was not suitable to proceed as a U.S.-style, opt-out class action.