Bloomberg An Indian court has urged the federal election commission and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to postpone state polls due early next year and ban large political gatherings to avoid a possible surge of omicron-fueled infections. The Allahabad High Court, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, asked the Election Commission of India to defer elections by as much ...

  Bloomberg South Korea’s government will grant a special pardon to former President Park Geun-hye, releasing her from prison after she spent nearly five years behind bars of a 22-year sentence for corruption. Park, a conservative and a prominent rival of the current leader, will be released on December 31, the Justice Ministry said. “From the perspective of the national ...

  Bloomberg Poland’s government rejected fresh allegations that it illegally hacked the mobile phone of a senior opposition lawmaker during the 2019 parliamentary election campaign, the latest spying scandal hitting the country’s nationalist leaders. The Associated Press reported that Senator Krzysztof Brejza’s mobile phone was hacked with sophisticated spyware when he was running the main opposition party’s campaign, citing internet ...

  Bloomberg Thailand’s central bank held its benchmark interest rate unchanged for a 13th straight meeting to assess how much risk the omicron variant poses to a fragile economic recovery. The Bank of Thailand’s (BOT) rate setting committee voted unanimously to hold the one-day bond repurchase rate at a record-low 0.5%, as predicted by all 20 economists in a Bloomberg ...

  Bloomberg ING Groep NV will take an unspecified fourth-quarter charge to exit French retail banking, its latest move to pull out of non-core European markets. The Amsterdam-based lender has reached a deal with local unions on a social plan for 460 employees, according to a statement. The bank, which is waiting for approval of its plan by the French ...

  Bloomberg Union Bank of the Philippines will buy Citigroup Inc’s consumer banking assets in the Southeast Asian country for a cash consideration plus a premium of 45.3 billion pesos ($904 million). The deal covers the US firm’s local credit card, unsecured lending, deposit and investment businesses as well as Citicorp Financial Services and Insurance Brokerage Philippines Inc, Citigroup and ...

  Bloomberg The Bank of Spain more than doubled its forecast for inflation next year but still sees it easing sharply after that to well below the 2% goal for the euro zone. The central bank raised its outlook for annual price increases to 3.7% in 2022 and then slightly reduced the projection for the following year to 1.2%. Inflation ...

  Bloomberg Traders are betting the Bank of England will look through risks from the omicron strain to hike its key interest rate above 1% next year for the first time since 2009. Money markets are now pricing 100 basis points of policy tightening from the UK central bank in Dec. 2022, according to sterling overnight index swaps. That would ...

  Bloomberg The Hungarian central bank raised effective interest rates for the sixth time in as many weeks to stem accelerating inflation. A day after Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced a freeze on mortgage rates — which will act as a break on monetary tightening from the central bank — policy makers raised the one-week deposit rate by 20 basis ...

  Bloomberg A Chinese proverb goes, “If you have guanxi (relations) with very important people, all your troubles will go away, but if you don’t have any guanxi with any VIP, your troubles will continue to haunt you.” Carmakers seem to be embracing the proverb as they continue to confront and struggle with the persistent chip shortage that’s expected to ...