Bloomberg Sweden’s unemployment rate unexpectedly spiked to a four-year high in August, raising questions around the central bank’s plans to hike interest rates and driving the krona lower. The seasonally-adjusted jobless rate jumped to 7.4 percent, much worse than the 6.8 percent reading in a Bloomberg survey of economist estimates. The news, which resulted in a 0.8 percent decline in ...

Bloomberg Riksbank policy makers look intent on bringing an end to almost half a decade of negative interest rates, according to minutes from their most recent meeting. The central bank earlier this month delivered an upbeat assessment of the economy and signalled a plan to raise rates towards the end of the year or early next year. The move came ...

Bloomberg One of Europe’s most senior banking regulators is switching sides to represent the region’s biggest lenders on policy issues, drawing criticism from lawmakers and advocacy groups. Adam Farkas, currently the executive director of the European Banking Authority (EBA), will become the head of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, the industry group said in a statement. The EBA ...

Bloomberg Bank of Japan (BOJ) officials think lowering the negative interest rate, if they chose to do so in the coming months, wouldn’t backfire in financial markets because investors are aware of the possibility, according to people familiar with the matter. While most officials wouldn’t be drawn on when the BOJ might act, some of the officials see little need ...

Bloomberg A plan to establish the world’s largest green-energy financing initiative is being threshed out in South Africa, which needs to reduce its environmental footprint and find innovative ways to fund debt-stricken state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. The plan being formulated by Meridian Economics, a Cape Town-based think tank, is under consideration by the government. It envisions the ...

Bloomberg Lebanon’s gas station owners will stage a nationwide strike on Wednesday to protest the government’s failure to provide enough dollars to pay suppliers. The businesses say local banks lack hard currency they need, forcing them to buy dollars at exchange houses above the fixed rate of 1,507.5 Lebanese pounds to the greenback. The Energy Ministry prices gasoline and diesel ...

Bloomberg US index futures edged lower with European stocks while Treasuries continued higher as investors weighed the fallout from a drone attack on one of the world’s biggest oil facilities and the record surge in crude prices that followed. Contracts on the three main US stock indexes dipped after fluctuating earlier. The Europe Stoxx 600 index ticked lower, led by ...

Bloomberg China’s restrained approach to easing spooked financial markets on Tuesday, with stocks and the yuan dropping the most in weeks. The Shanghai Composite Index retreated 1.7 percent, its biggest decline in more than two months, to close below the psychologically important 3,000 level. The onshore yuan fell 0.37 percent, the most in three weeks, to 7.0950 a dollar as ...

Bloomberg The Hong Kong dollar became the ninth most traded currency in the world earlier this year, ranking just below the yuan, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The city’s currency accounted for 3.5 percent of global average daily turnover in April, compared with 1.7 percent during the same month in 2016, the latest triennial survey by BIS ...

Bloomberg China will need to spend $2.9 trillion on new aircraft and ground services over the next two decades, according to Boeing Co, which continues to pin hopes on the world’s second-largest economy as its trade dispute with the US rolls on. The estimate, released in Boeing’s annual outlook on China’s commercial aviation market, is 7 percent higher than last ...