Bloomberg Britain faces the bleakest two years of any major industrial nation with a recession in 2023 and the slowest growth of peers in 2024, the International Monetary Fund predicts. The UK will be the only Group of Seven member whose economy will shrink this year, with a contraction of 0.6%, the IMF said. That makes Britain’s outlook even worse ...

  Bloomberg Falling values are the latest headache for landlords in Europe who need to refinance their debt. It’s a problem for their lenders too. There’s a gap of €51 billion ($55 billion) between the amount owed by commercial property owners across Germany, France and the UK and the credit likely to be available for refinancing when the borrowings mature, ...

  Bloomberg Norway’s $1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund reported its biggest loss since the 2008 financial crisis after markets were pummeled by faster inflation, higher credit costs and the fallout from the war in Ukraine. The fund that manages Norway’s fossil wealth lost 14.1% in 2022, equivalent to about $164 billion, according to a statement on Tuesday. It’s the world’s ...

  Bloomberg Brexit is costing the UK economy £100 billion a year ($124 billion), with the effects spanning everything from business investment to the ability of companies to hire workers. An analysis by Bloomberg Economics three years after Britain left the European Union paints a bleak picture of the damage done by the way the split has been implemented by ...

Bloomberg French labor unions are leading a second day of mass strikes and protests on Tuesday against raising the retirement age in a test of the momentum driving defiance to Emmanuel Macron’s signature economic reform. The country’s rail operator, SNCF, expects only one-third of high-speed TGVs to run and urged people to work from home. Subway and commuter trains serving ...

Bloomberg The US and South Korea are planning to step up the scale of their joint military exercises, a move that has in the past prompted threats and weapons tests by North Korea. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and South Korean counterpart Lee Jong-sup agreed in talks Tuesday in Seoul to “further expand and bolster the level and scale of ...

Bloomberg China lashed out at the Czech Republic after incoming President Petr Pavel spoke with Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen, saying the move amounted to “serious interference” in its affairs. “This is a blatant violation of the Czech Republic’s political commitment to the one-China principle,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Tuesday at a regular press briefing in Beijing, referring to ...

  Bloomberg China’s Coast Guard maintained near-daily patrols at key features across the disputed South China Sea last year, ramping up its presence as tensions over the waterway with Southeast Asian neighbors remain high, new tracking data shows. Patrols in the waters surrounding the Vanguard Bank off Vietnam, an area known for its oil and gas reserves and the site ...

  Bloomberg Hungary’s nationalist government ousted hundreds of senior military leaders in the most far-reaching overhaul of the central European nation’s army since it joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The dismissals affect the top ranks, including generals, with colonels and lieutenant colonels making up the biggest share, Defense Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky said in an interview on Monday. It was ...

  Bloomberg Croatia’s President Zoran Milanovic drew a parallel from Russia’s annexation of Crimea to Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, causing an uproar across the Balkans. “Who annexed Kosovo? The international community, including us,” Milanovic said Monday in a speech in the Croatian town of Petrinja, where he spoke about the war in Ukraine. “Kosovo was taken from Serbia by force, ...