Bloomberg The Czech central bank pushed back against billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s criticism of its efforts to curb inflation with higher borrowing costs. The surprising February rate increase — the only one globally this year — prompted a rebuke from Babis, who said such moves are boosting banks’ earnings while hurting the economy during a slowdown. The bank is …

Bloomberg Brazil’s central bank announced it will sell dollars in the spot market for the first time this year, boosting its efforts to support the currency after a dire week. Policy makers will offer as much as $1 billion in a spot dollar auction. The central bank had been stepping into the foreign exchange markets only via swap auctions, of …

Bloomberg Airbus SE is considering a cut in A330neo jet production after the wide-body’s biggest customer said a coronavirus-driven slump in travel had forced it to defer deliveries, according to people familiar with the matter. The planemaker may make a decision as soon as this month, the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private. In …

Bloomberg The coronavirus outbreak couldn’t have come at a worse time for PT Garuda Indonesia, pummeling demand at the flag carrier just as it faces a debt bill for half a billion dollars. Debt market concern about sagging travel demand and the impact of financial market turmoil has caused Garuda’s $500 million notes due on June 3 to tumble to …

Bloomberg An outbreak of four coronavirus cases tied to a Vietnam Airlines flight from London to Hanoi triggered hoarding in the Southeast Asian country’s capital, the lockdown of a central city neighbourhood and the home quarantine of an investment minister aboard the aircraft. A growing sense that the virus may be bypassing Vietnam, which hadn’t reported an official case in …

Bloomberg If 2019 was a bad year for Tony Tan Caktiong, the Philippine tycoon who built a fast-food empire that trounced McDonald’s in his home market, 2020 is shaping out to be worse for his company’s stock. After wooing millions of Filipinos for decades with its signature fried chicken, Tan’s Jollibee Foods Corp set out on an expansion in the …

Bloomberg Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd will suspend flights to and from Japan for three weeks after the Japanese government tightened quarantine rules on people arriving from Hong Kong. Flights to and from Hong Kong and four Japanese airports and cities — Tokyo’s Haneda airport, Fukuoka, Nagoya and Sapporo — will stop from Monday until March 28, and halted for Narita …

Bloomberg The UK will withdraw as a member state of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) after December 31, Aviation Week reported, citing an interview with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps. “We will leave EASA,” Shapps said in the interview. “A lot of the expertise they have is UK expertise, in fact. A lot of the key leading lights were …

Bloomberg Finance chiefs from the world’s top industrial and emerging nations committed to “take further actions” to aid the world economy amid mounting fears the coronavirus is dragging it towards a recession. At the end of a week in which the virus spread and an emergency Federal Reserve rate cut failed to calm investors, Group of 20 finance ministers and …

Bloomberg The Opec+ alliance’s dramatic failure to reach an output deal is most obviously being felt in oil futures, which plunged the most since 2008 in London. A look at the less-conspicuous corners of the market reveal the scale of the impact. The potential collapse of the group led by Saudi Arabia and Russia is the latest blow to a …