Headlines

In early September, the Ukraine Parliament passed a law legalizing and regulating Bitcoin, step one in an ambitious campaign to both mainstream the nation’s thriving trade in crypto and to rebrand the entire country, the New York Times reported. “The big idea is to become one of the top jurisdictions in the world for crypto companies,” said Alexander Bornyakov, deputy minister at the two-year old Ministry of Digital Transformation.

The Bank of Canada will not raise its benchmark interest rate until the slack in the country's economy is absorbed, which has not yet happened but is getting closer, Governor Tiff Macklem said in a newspaper opinion piece on Monday, Reuters reported. Macklem also noted that while inflation risks have increased - driven by pandemic-induced demand shifts, supply disruptions and higher energy prices - the central bank continues to view the recent dynamics as transitory.

The Peruvian economy grew 9.71% year-on-year in September, slightly above a recent central bank projection, but its slowest pace of expansion since March as it recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, the government reported on Monday, Reuters reported. Three days earlier, the central bank estimated that the economy had grown between 8.5% and 9.5% in September. In September last year, the economy of the world's second-largest copper producer fell 6.10% year-on-year, when Peru closed large swathes of its economy due to the pandemic.

Boom-era property player Bernard McNamara’s multi-million euro pension pot is protected from his creditors following an EU court ruling, the Irish Times reported. The British high court declared Mr McNamara bankrupt in 2012 on his own application. He was one of many Irish developers who opted to bankrupt themselves in the UK, where the bankruptcy period was one year, rather than in the Republic, where it was 12 years at the time. The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that creditors cannot get access to an insurance policy that was part of his Irish-registered pension.

Tightening monetary policy now to rein in inflation could choke off the euro zone's recovery, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Monday, pushing back on calls and market bets for tighter policy, Reuters reported. With inflation already twice its 2% target and likely rising further later this year, the ECB is coming under increased pressure to abandon its ultra easy monetary policy and tackle price growth that is eroding households' purchasing power.

Dutch cooperative Rabobank said on Monday it had been ordered by the Dutch central bank to fix its customer due diligence practices and that it is facing a "punitive enforcement procedure," Reuters reported. In a statement, Rabobank said it had received an instruction from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) on Oct. 12 to remedy deficiencies in its compliance with laws against money laundering. It said it was too early to say whether the procedure would result in a fine.

Airline Grupo Aeromexico SAB received a proposal to emerge from bankruptcy by having lead lender Apollo Global Management Inc. convert some debt into equity. A previous exit package didn’t include the U.S. firm getting a stake, Bloomberg News reported. The carrier, which filed for chapter 11 in 2020 after the pandemic decreased travel, said that a group of new and existing creditors and investors will repay the rest of the loan held by Apollo, which led the carrier’s debtor-in-possession financing. Amounts were not disclosed.

An expert panel has suggested designing a national dashboard for insolvency data, saying "reliable real-time data" is essential to assess the performance of the insolvency process under the IBC, the Economic Times of India reported. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), which provides for a time-bound and market-linked resolution of stressed assets, has been in force for more than five years now.

Sunac China Holdings Ltd. raised about $953 million through the sale of new shares as well as a stake in its property management unit, the latest Chinese developer to seek funds amid an industry-wide liquidity crunch, Bloomberg News reported. Sunac said it sold 335 million shares at a price of HK$15.18 each, raising about $653 million, in a statement Sunday. Another $300 million came from a sale of 158 million shares in its property management arm Sunac Services Holdings Ltd., via a subsidiary. Sunac Services shares were sold at HK$14.75, a discount of 11% to Friday’s closing price.