Headlines

Lebanon may be closer than ever to breaking a two-year deadlock in talks with the International Monetary Fund, a senior official said, a step that could help draw a line under one of the world’s worst financial crises in over a century, Bloomberg News reported. The economy is in the grip of hyperinflation with the currency in freefall after the government defaulted on over $30 billion in international debt.

Amid the mayhem provoked in the world energy market by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Spain and Portugal have emerged in a strategically advantageous position as an “energy island” in Europe, with a relatively low reliance on Russian natural gas, the Associated Press reported. Leaders in renewable energy thanks to solar, wind and hydraulic power, Spain and Portugal are now poised to reap the benefits of long-term investments in liquefied natural gas, or LNG.

Credit Suisse Group AG shareholders proposed a special audit over the collapse of a group of supply chain finance funds it ran with now-defunct Greensill Capital, after the bank refused to publish an internal report on the matter, Bloomberg News reported. The lender urged shareholders to vote against the proposal at the bank’s annual general meeting next month, saying it could complicate efforts to recover investor money that remains locked up more than a year after it was frozen. The audit is being proposed by the Ethos Foundation and seven Swiss pension funds.

The president of Britain’s Supreme Court said Wednesday that he and a colleague were stepping down from their roles on Hong Kong’s highest court because the administration of the Chinese territory had “departed from values of political freedom and freedom of expression,” the New York Times reported. Their resignations will heighten scrutiny of Hong Kong’s British-style legal system, which the former British colony kept even after it returned to Chinese control in 1997.

Indian private lender Axis Bank has decided to bulk up its credit card and retail businesses with a $1.6-billion purchase of Citigroup Inc.'s local consumer banking arm, Reuters reported. The deal announced on Wednesday is Axis Bank's largest by far and would expand its credit card customer base by 31%, narrowing the gap with the third-biggest player ICICI Bank.

Mexico's financial stability council said on Wednesday that there is risk of credit rating action on the ratings for the sovereign and state oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex). The council, which includes Mexico's finance minister, central bank governor and head of the banking commission, said a credit rating action on Pemex has been mitigated by measures to improve the tax take and higher oil prices. Read more.

Auditors have resigned from a series of Chinese property companies, reflecting the challenges of verifying these businesses’ financial health after a punishing sector-wide downturn, the Wall Street Journal reported. Audit firms are probably taking a hard look at the developers’ results after a series of revelations about off-balance-sheet debts, analysts and investors say. Pandemic-related restrictions in mainland China and Hong Kong have also made it harder to collect information.

Lending to consumers in Britain rose last month by the most in nearly five years, driven by a record rise in credit card borrowing, according to data that analysts said could be a sign of the growing cost-of-living squeeze, Reuters reported. Figures from the Bank of England on Tuesday showed consumer credit rose by a net 1.876 billion pounds ($2.46 billion) in February, about 1 billion pounds more than expected in a Reuters poll of economists and the biggest increase since March 2017.

The head of the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) was on Tuesday accused of "very, very basic errors in litigation" and hiding behind a review into the agency's failings in a tetchy grilling by lawmakers, Reuters reported. Lisa Osofsky said she was duty bound to wait for the recommendations of former High Court judge David Calvert-Smith before being drawn on how two convictions in the high-profile Unaoil bribery prosecution were quashed by the Court of Appeal.

An Ontario court cleared the way for a receiver to wind up bankrupt lender Bridging Finance Inc., rejecting an attempt by investors to stall the liquidation, Bloomberg News reported. A group of Bridging unitholders had asked the Ontario Superior Court to allow more time to consider proposals to sell or reorganize the funds. But Justice Geoffrey Morawetz turned down their request and said PriceWaterhouseCoopers can cease its attempts to find a buyer, according to court documents posted Tuesday.