Bloomberg Peru’s new president is off to a rocky start, selecting contentious ministers, alienating allies and setting the stage for a brutal face-off with congress, all within days of taking office. A rural teacher and union activist, Pedro Castillo won the election after reassurances that he’s his own man, not beholden to his party’s Marxist ideology or chief. But when ...
Read More »New York Gov’s top aide resigns amid harassment claims
Bloomberg Melissa DeRosa, the highest-ranking aide to Andrew Cuomo, resigned as the embattled New York governor contends with possible criminal charges over numerous harassment claims and a potential impeachment trial. DeRosa, who had remained one of Cuomo’s chief defenders throughout multiple scandals, said she would step down from her post as secretary to the governor after what she called a ...
Read More »Troops eject rebels who besieged Total’s Mozambique LNG project
Bloomberg Troops from Mozambique and Rwanda retook a port town at the heart of a four-year insurgency that led to the suspension of a $20 billion project by TotalEnergies SE. Soldiers from the two countries retook Mocimboa da Praia, which insurgents with ties to IS have held for a year, the Rwanda Defence Force said in Twitter post. The Mozambican ...
Read More »China punishes officials as Delta outbreaks spread
Bloomberg China has punished a slew of officials for failing to curb a Covid-19 outbreak that’s spawned nearly 900 symptomatic infections across the country in less than a month, a resurgence that complicates Beijing’s strategy of keeping the virus out entirely. The eastern Chinese city of Yangzhou issued warnings to five officials for mishandling mass testing that they said allowed ...
Read More »Australian PM’s popularity slumps amid lockdowns
Bloomberg Australians’ approval of Prime Minister Scott Morrison has fallen to the lowest level since the pandemic began, with voters wearying of virus-induced lockdowns amid his government’s tardy vaccine rollout. Support for Morrison’s handling of the crisis has fallen from 85% in April last year —when his conservative government imposed strict border controls that helped keep virus fatalities to less ...
Read More »BOE’s hawkish turn reignites pound’s pre-Covid strength
Bloomberg The pound is about to enter a new era of strength against the euro, thanks to the Bank of England’s (BOE) hawkish turn. Traders have raised the odds of a rate hike in February to 60% after the BOE made clear last week that it’s beginning a countdown to end the era of rock-bottom borrowing costs. And it’s given ...
Read More »Ecuador central bank doubles BIS credit line to $840m
Bloomberg Ecuador’s central bank doubled its emergency credit line with the Bank for International Settlements to $840 million as a precautionary measure in case of a downturn, its governor said in an interview. The credit line is part of efforts to strengthen the bank after previous administrations used its funds for government spending, Guillermo Avellan said. Those actions hurt the ...
Read More »JPMorgan: Digital currencies must balance inclusion, banks
Bloomberg The creation of central bank digital currencies to address economic inequality with new retail loan and payments channels must be designed so they don’t “cannibalise†a country’s commercial financial system, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. If set up hastily, retail CBDCs could risk “disintermediating commercial banks†and lead to the exodus of 20% to 30% of their funding ...
Read More »Westpac sells Life Insurer unit to Dai-Ichi for $660m
Bloomberg Westpac Banking Corp has agreed to sell its life insurance unit to Dai-ichi Life Holdings Inc’s Australian subsidiary TAL for $660 million as Australia’s second-largest lender continues to jettison non-core assets to focus on lending. The completion of the transaction, confirming an earlier Bloomberg report, is expected to happen in the second half of next year, Westpac said. Under ...
Read More »Citi sells its Australia retail unit as CEO Jane Fraser begins revamp
Bloomberg Citigroup Inc has sold the first of 13 markets Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser put on the block, agreeing a deal to offload its Australian consumer unit to National Australia Bank Ltd. The Australian lender will pay the US bank cash for the net assets of the Citigroup Consumer Business plus a premium of A$250 million ($184 million), according ...
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