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Bloomberg Oil prices plunged below $24 a barrel for the first time in almost 18 years after Saudi Arabia doubled down in its price war with Russia, vowing to keep production at a record high “over the coming months.” For the last 10 days, Riyadh has issued nearly daily statements raising the stakes in its battle with Moscow, first announcing …

Bloomberg European banks took $130 billion made available by the US Federal Reserve on Wednesday, helping ease the funding stress from the coronavirus pandemic. Lenders from the euro zone borrowed the bulk of the money — $112 billion in operations coordinated by the European Central Bank (ECB). That’s the biggest use of the crisis-era swap lines since the global financial …

Bloomberg Saudi Arabia plans to boost oil exports even further from April to May, reaching a record of more than 10 million barrels a day as the kingdom taps a new field. The increase in shipments of about 250,000 barrels a day shows the kingdom is determined to carry on with its policy of pumping flat out after its alliance …

Bloomberg The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is ready to mobilise its $1 trillion lending capacity to help nations counter the coronavirus outbreak, with Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva calling for global coordination on monetary, fiscal and regulatory support. Georgieva reiterated in a blog post that the fund has $50 billion in flexible and rapid-disbursing emergency funds for developing nations, with as …

Bloomberg Oil’s spectacular collapse deepened as widening global efforts to fight the spread of the coronavirus looked set to trigger the most severe contraction in annual oil demand in history. Futures tumbled more than 9% after losing a quarter of their value last week. Demand for jet fuel, gasoline and diesel is falling off a cliff as a result of …

GENEVA / WAM All World Trade Organisation (WTO), meetings are suspended until the end of April and Secretariat staff have been requested to work from home until the end of March. Director-General Roberto Azevedo has informed WTO members and staff that access to the organisation’s premises will be restricted as of March 16. “In light of developments related to the …

Bloomberg Europeans were faced with increasingly draconian restrictions on public life on Sunday, as governments from Spain to Scandinavia and the Baltic tried to check the spread of the coronavirus and limit the damage to continent’s fragile economies. With Europe now the epicenter of outbreak, Austria banned gatherings of more than five people, urged citizens to self-isolate and said it …

Bloomberg Record lows, trading halts, capitulation and spending cuts made for a wild week in the energy sector after Saudi Arabia and Russia embarked on a war for market share, sending crude and equity prices in a downward spiral. The S&P 500 energy index never recouped the stunning losses it saw at the beginning of the week, despite the late-day …

Bloomberg Nizana Brautmann found out her 6-year-old son had been exposed to coronavirus via a note on the locked door of his Berlin daycare center. It told parents to take their kids home and wait. As the focus of the new pandemic shifts to Europe, authorities there have been slower to embrace the aggressive testing credited with helping to curb …

Bloomberg The economic fallout from the coronavirus could be more serious than the damage done by the 2008 global financial crisis for Singapore, according to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. “We can’t tell when the pandemic will end, but it will likely last at least this year, and quite possibly longer,” Lee said in a Facebook post. “The economic hit …