By Uditha Jayasinghe COLOMBO (Reuters) -Sri Lanka’s parliament on Thursday approved a new law to improve the independence of the country’s central bank, the deputy speaker said, as part of reforms linked to a $2.9 billion International Monetary Fund bailout package. Economic mismanagement coupled with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic left Sri Lanka severely…
(Reuters) – Bain Capital has increased its offer for SoftwareOne Holding AG to about 3.2 billion Swiss francs ($3.72 billion), Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The private equity firm has tabled a new proposal of around 20 francs per share for the Swiss software management company, the report…
By Gleb Stolyarov and Alexander Marrow (Reuters) – The relaunch of a classic Soviet-era car, the Moskvich, by a state-owned company in November was celebrated by Moscow’s mayor as showing the resilience of Russia’s auto industry to Western sanctions. “This is a historic event,” Sergei Sobyanin said as the Moskvich was unveiled at a factory…
By Ezgi Erkoyun and Nevzat Devranoglu ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Turkey’s central bank hiked its policy rate by 250 basis points to 17.5% on Thursday, continuing to reverse President Tayyip Erdogan’s low-rates policy as it promised more tightening and said it would support it with additional measures. It was the second meeting under new Governor Hafize Gaye…
LONDON (Reuters) – Wall Street bank JPMorgan revised both its growth and inflation outlooks for Turkey upwards after the central bank delivered a smaller-than-expected interest rate hike on Thursday. JPMorgan forecast that full-year economic growth would stand at 4% by year-end rather than the previously expected 3.2%. Meanwhile, inflationary pressures have intensified in July due…
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Thursday strongly condemned the attack on the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad over a planned Koran burning in Stockholm and criticized Iraq’s security forces for not preventing protesters from breaching the diplomatic post. “Freedom of peaceful assembly is an essential hallmark of democracy, but what occurred last night was…
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Euro zone gross domestic product was flat in the first three months of this year against the previous quarter, the EU’s statistics agency Eurostat said on Thursday, revising a previous reading of a 0.1% quarter-on-quarter contraction. The revision means that the 20 countries sharing the euro currency did not, after all, enter…
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s antitrust regulator is waiting for Microsoft to submit a modified deal structure to buy “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard, its boss Sarah Cardell said on Thursday. “We understand from Microsoft that they would like to put forward proposals to us to restructure the deal, potentially re-notifying that deal, to address…
By Guy Faulconbridge and Felix Light MOSCOW (Reuters) -Mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group have started to train Belarusian special forces at a military range just a few miles from the border with NATO-member Poland, the Belarusian defence ministry said on Thursday. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was shown in a video on Wednesday welcoming his fighters…
(Reuters) – European airports are in the midst of another busy summer as passenger numbers globally recover to pre-pandemic levels, while airline and airport staff continue wage talks. The travel industry is on high alert for disruption after Europe’s peak season last year was hit by cancellations, causing chaos at airports. This summer, air traffic…
