Business blog

Evergrande Real Estate Group Ltd updates

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Bond yields at some of China’s biggest real estate companies are rising in a sign that fears over debt problems at leading developer Evergrande are spreading more widely through the sector.

The bonds of Guangzhou R&F, a property developer, edged lower in Shanghai on Tuesday to 60 per cent of their face value, following falls of more than 20 per cent a day earlier. The moves came after Moody’s, the rating agency, downgraded the group’s

This is the first in a two-part series about Xi Jinping’s assertion of greater control in China

A prominent leftist commentator in China has denounced “big capitalists” and entertainment industry “sissy-boy stars”. Leading public figures are disappearing from view. Others are racing to declare their fealty — and pledge billions of dollars — to the policy priorities of an all-powerful supreme leader who has life-tenure.

A sudden frenzy of political activity over the past two weeks has many people wondering if China is entering a new political era, one which embraces elements of Maoist political campaigns as the Communist party

European Central Bank updates

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“Go big or go home,” is how Christine Lagarde likes to describe the European Central Bank’s response to the economic carnage caused by the pandemic. 

Now that Europe’s economy is rebounding from the Covid-19 crisis, the challenge facing the ECB president is how the central bank should unwind its massive monetary stimulus without cutting short the recovery or spooking the bond market, especially for southern European borrowers.

The delicate task has intensified divisions within the ECB and, on Thursday,

Drivers in Lagos last week were paying N162 ($0.40) per litre of petrol, among the lowest rates in Africa — beneficiaries of a fuel subsidy that costs the continent’s biggest crude producer billions of dollars a year. 

It was a reminder that while Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari signed a big oil industry reform act last month — which dictates that fuel should be sold at market prices — little is likely to change soon in Nigeria’s moribund oil industry, or the economy that relies on it.

The bill, first put forward more than two decades ago, will create separate regulatory

Goldman Sachs Group updates

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Goldman Sachs is planning to list Petershill Partners in a deal that would value the Wall Street bank’s stakes in alternative asset managers at more than $5bn, according to people familiar with the situation, amid a global boom for private equity.

Petershill Partners, which owns minority stakes in 19 alternative assets firms with a combined $187bn of assets under management, said on Monday that it is considering an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange. A flotation would