Headlines

A small team of International Monetary Fund staff will visit Tunisia later this month for further discussions about a possible IMF-supported financing program, the global lender said on Thursday, citing good progress in discussions to date, Reuters reported. IMF spokesperson Gerry Rice said the visit comes after several months of consultations with Tunisian authorities on their request for a fund-supported program. "A small staff team from the IMF plans to visit Tunisia for further discussions with the authorities later this month ...

Grupo Aeromexico announced today that it has completed its financial restructuring process, officially exiting chapter 11 under which it voluntarily entered in June 2020 in the midst of the worst crisis in the airline industry unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic, AviaciOnline reported. Since then, the company has been going through a series of changes in the company’s structure and multiple negotiations with creditors, workers and institutions. According to Aeromexico, the value of the capital after the restructuring is approximately USD 2,564 million.

Najib Razak has urged the government to protect Sapura Energy Bhd from bankruptcy by providing loans or instructing Petronas or Khazanah Nasional to take over ownership from Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB), Free Malaysia Today reported. The former prime minister was critical of PNB for failing to take action during the tenure of the previous Perikatan Nasional administration on Sapura’s problems and for stopping cash flow assistance. “PNB and the government need to think about the country’s strategic interests.

The European Central Bank will take action if it sees second-round inflation effects and a de-anchoring of medium-term inflation expectations, European Central Bank Vice President Luis de Guindos told German newspaper Handelsblatt, Reuters reported. Earlier this month, the ECB accelerated its exit from unconventional stimulus, and investors have been ramping up their bets on higher ECB rates. De Guindos told Handelsblatt that second-round effects and de-anchoring of price expectations would be "deciding factors" for the central bank. "If we see those, then we will act," he said.

Dubai-owned P&O Ferries on Thursday suspended its passenger and freight ships but denied the group was heading into bankruptcy, Times of Malta reported. P&O Ferries operates four routes serving Britain, France, Ireland and the Netherlands. “P&O Ferries is not going into liquidation,” the company owned by DP World said in a statement. “We have asked all ships to come alongside (return to dock), in preparation for a company announcement.

Western companies that maintain a presence in Russia to provide essential goods such as food and medicines are trying to strike a balance between President Vladimir Putin's government and advocates of Ukraine pulling them in opposite directions, Reuters reported. More than 400 companies have withdrawn from Russia since the launch of its attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, according to a list compiled by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management.

A truck drivers' strike for better working conditions has caused disruptions at some supermarkets and certain industries in Spain, with dairy food producers complaining on Thursday of some supply shortages as they received less milk, Reuters reported.

China’s economy got off to a racing start this year as factories churned out more goods and consumers dug deeper into their wallets, the Wall Street Journal reported. But while industrial output and retail spending in the first two months both blew past analysts’ expectations, a rapidly spreading COVID-19 outbreak and the impact of war in Ukraine threaten an early end to the party, and throw into doubt China’s economic-growth target of around 5.5%.

Some creditors have received payment, in dollars, of Russian bond coupons that fell due this week, two market sources said on Thursday, meaning Russia may for now have averted what would have been its first external bond default in a century, Reuters reported. The Russian finance ministry said earlier that it had sent funds to cover $117 million in coupon payments on two dollar-denominated sovereign bonds.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Tomislav Pili writes, Russian bankruptcy, which is increasingly likely to occur soon, will not be felt by the Croatian financial system, and global finances should not be shaken by such a scenario either, according to Croatian analysts, Croatia News reported. After announcing on Monday that the Russian Ministry of Finance will pay out interest to foreign investors in rubles instead of dollars, the story coming out of Moscow altered Russia's state treasury has announced an order has been sent to pay 117.2 million U.S.