Bloomberg Zimbabwe has adopted its harshest solution yet to halt a currency crisis — ordering banks to immediately stop all lending. The southern African nation’s President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, blames banks for flooding the financial system with excess funds, fueling a currency slide and inflation. The weekend directive to freeze loans is the latest in a series of orders since …

  Bloomberg Citigroup Inc is ramping up efforts to add 700 private bankers in coming years with the opening this week of two new private-banking offices in Paris and Frankfurt. The New York-based bank has begun relocating staff from its Luxembourg bureau to the new locations, which will be housed at existing offices in the two cities. Citigroup will increase …

  Bloomberg Chinese tech stocks fall as Hong Kong markets reopened after a holiday to face renewed growth worries and persistent regulatory risks, sparking another bout of selling. The Hang Seng Tech Index tumbled 3.2% on Tuesday, extending its slide into a fifth day. JD.com Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. were among the biggest drags. Key equities gauges across …

  Bloomberg The benchmark Philippine stock index dropped amid a global selloff, as investors awaited economic plans of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. who, based on an unofficial count of the vote, is headed for a landslide win in the presidential election. The Philippine Stock Exchange Index ended 0.6% down at 6,720.93, its lowest close in nine months. It falls as much …

  Bloomberg Fed hikes, decades-high inflation and Covid lockdowns in China are only adding to investor bets that Southeast Asia’s stock markets may be one of the best places to park their money right now. Buyers are touting an economic reopening and the region’s attraction as a hedge against higher commodity prices, which is helping the MSCI Asean Index break …

  Bloomberg Bitcoin is falling towards levels last seen in July 2021, part of a wider retreat in cryptocurrencies amid a global flight from riskier investments. The world’s largest digital token dropped as much as 2.7% on Monday and was trading at $33,568 as of 8:44 am in London. The second biggest, Ether, shed as much 4.6%. Most of the …

Bloomberg Gazprom has written to its European clients seeking to reassure them that they can keep paying for gas without breaching sanctions, the latest indication that Russia may be trying to find a way to keep the gas flowing. European companies are scrambling to work out how they can keep buying Russian gas after Moscow demanded payments be made in …

Bloomberg Among elevated metal prices, lithium stands out, as booming electric-vehicle sales send the battery component skyrocketing. Conspicuously, the world’s biggest mining company has no plans to join the rush. For BHP Group, the frenzied talk about looming lithium shortages in a clean-energy transition will fade given it’s one of the more abundant elements in nature. Ironically, given the silvery-white …

  Bloomberg The owners of Asda Group are considering piling debt onto the supermarket chain to raise the money to buy Boots, another fixture on UK high streets. Brothers Zuber and Mohsin Issa, alongside TDR Capital LLP, have discussed saddling the supermarket with as much as 4.5 billion pounds ($5.6 billion) of additional debt, on top of the multi-billion pound …

Bloomberg A majority of Latam Airlines Group SA’s unsecured creditors have voted in favour of its proposed restructuring plan, easing the Chilean carrier’s path out of bankruptcy. About 65% of the low-ranking creditors voted to accept the plan, the company said in a statement, giving Latam a crucial level of support before asking its bankruptcy judge to sign off on …