Headlines

Canadian banks have begun cutting off financial services to people linked with ongoing anti-vaccine-mandate demonstrations in Canada, an unprecedented use of financial power following an emergency order from the government, the Wall Street Journal reported. With protesters occupying the streets of Canada’s capital, Ottawa, and several border crossings blockaded until recently, the government has used emergency powers to put the nation’s financial institutions in the unusual position of using their anti-money-laundering and sanctions expertise to crack down on banking customers.

World Bank Group President David Malpass said on Friday that he does not believe G20 finance ministers are taking adequate steps to deal with a growing debt overhang that is threatening the recovery of poor countries that will have to spend precious resources repaying debt to wealthy creditors, Reuters reported. "You know, the G 20 finance ministers are meeting right now today, trying to hammer out a communique," Malpass told a forum at the Munich Security Conference.

Indonesia’s central bank may start next year to sell the government bonds it bought as part of a $58 billion debt monetization that supported stimulus spending during the pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. “We will discuss the possibilities later but based on the information that we have now, it is likely that we will roll back our government bond holding starting next year,” Governor Perry Warjiyo said in a Saturday interview.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has received approval from an Ontario court of a C$125 million ($98 million) settlement to resolve claims in a class-action lawsuit alleging misrepresentations made by the bank and its former executives in 2007 and 2008, the plaintiffs' lawyers said on Friday, Reuters reported. Misrepresentations were found in CIBC's quarterly financial filings and public oral statements about the Canadian bank's investments in the United States and its exposure to U.S.

Passengers are starting to arrive in Australia as it allowed travel by double-vaccinated visitors, following almost two years of strict travel bans introduced to stem the spread of Covid-19, Bloomberg News reported. It’s also a long-awaited day for the tourism sector -- which employed about 5% of the nation’s workforce and contributed 3% to the economy prior to the pandemic -- and was already reeling in early 2020 from devastating wildfires.

India and the United Arab Emirates signed a broad trade and investment pact on Friday that will eventually cut all tariffs on each other's goods and aims to increase annual trade between the two nations to $100 billion within five years, Reuters reported. The virtual signing ceremony marks the first trade deal sealed by the Gulf state since it began pursuing such pacts last September in a bid to strengthen its status as a business hub.

A former employee of investment bank Lazard was sentenced on Friday to an 18-month suspended jail term by a German court after being found guilty of insider trading, a court spokesperson said, Reuters reported. The ruling by the Frankfurt regional court came after the ex-employee was charged in 2021 for passing on tips about upcoming takeovers of listed firms to the former head of an insurance company for almost two years.

A group of Credito Real SAB bondholders has engaged Los Angeles-based investment bank Houlihan Lokey Inc. to help advise them in restructuring talks with the Mexican shadow lender, Bloomberg News reported. Credito Real has begun to reach out to bondholders and is expected to begin restructuring talks with them shortly, one of the people said. Doubleline Capital LP is among the firms with a sizable position in Credito Real’s bonds, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly.

A group of Latam Airlines Group SA’s creditors said they are prepared to provide alternative financing if a bankruptcy judge rejects a financial lifeline from another creditor group, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The splinter group of creditors, which includes Pentwater Capital Management LP, Invictus Global Management LLC and Avenue Capital Group, said it is ready to backstop $400 million of a rights offering and roughly $3.27 billion in the sale of convertible notes.

Air France-KLM is exploring new ways to raise funds to pay back a government pandemic bailout, while cautiously ramping up capacity as the latest coronavirus wave fades, Bloomberg News reported. The shares fell as much as 6.3% in Paris on Thursday after the struggling airline laid out options to raise capital of as much as 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion). Selling more equity would help the group lower debt and free itself from the conditions of state aid, but would also dilute existing owners.