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Category: 3. Business

  • Crude Futures Gain in Light Holiday Trade – The Wall Street Journal

    1. Crude Futures Gain in Light Holiday Trade  The Wall Street Journal
    2. Oil steadies as Russia-Ukraine peace hopes fade, Yemen tensions rise  Reuters
    3. Oil prices rise as tensions flare in Yemen  The Express Tribune
    4. Crude Oil Prices Supported by Global Geopolitical Risks  TradingView — Track All Markets
    5. Oil Holds Gain as Traders Weigh Geopolitics Against Inventories  Energy Connects

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  • PSX surges to new record as KSE-100 posts fresh all-time high

    PSX surges to new record as KSE-100 posts fresh all-time high

    Benchmark KSE-100 index closes at 174,472.80, led by gains in energy, banking, and power stocks

    Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) displays record-setting rally as it appears well-poised for a vibrant 2026, underpinned by improving sentiment and sustained liquidity, as it continued its record-setting momentum on Tuesday.

    The market began the session on a strong footing, swiftly scaling an intra-day high of 174,805.16 in early trading. However, profit-taking then triggered a mid-morning correction, pulling the index down to an intra-day low of 174,121.42. Subsequently, sentiment stabilised, with the market moving within a narrow band and posting a gradual recovery through the afternoon session.

    The benchmark index maintained its position in positive territory throughout the session, reflecting resilient investor confidence. The rally was primarily supported by energy, banking, and power stocks, with impressive contribution to the market’s advance, while fertilisers and cements faced mild pressure amid selective profit-taking. Overall, the broader trend stayed positive, driven by sector rotation rather than broad-based selling.

    Read: Islamic debt market deepens as Pakistan posts biggest-ever Sukuk issuance

    Subsequently, the benchmark KSE-100 index closed at a fresh all-time high of 174,472.80, rising by 576.45 points, 0.33%.

    In its market wrap, KTrade Securities wrote that PSX extended its record-setting momentum, with the KSE-100 index closing at a fresh all-time high of 174,472 points, gaining 576 points (+0.33% DoD). The broader trend remained positive, supported by sector rotation and selective profit-taking rather than broad-based selling.

    Gains were led by energy, banking, and power stocks, providing the backbone to the market’s upward move, while fertilizers and cements faced mild pressure. Strong buying interest was observed in Oil and Gas Development Company, United Bank, Pakistan Petroleum, Pakistan State Oil, Hub Power, Meezan Bank, and Attock Refinery, whereas Fauji Fertiliser, Engro Fertilisers, DG Khan Cement, Fauji Cement, and Maple Leafe Cement weighed on the index, it mentioned.

    Market participation stayed healthy despite minor intra-day volatility, with all-share volumes clocking in at 842 million shares, reflecting sustained liquidity and investor confidence.

    KTrade predicted the outlook to remain constructive, supported by improving macro fundamentals and continued sector-wise interest.

    Overall trading volume decreased to 851 million against Monday’s tally of 858 million. Value of traded shares stood at Rs44.9 billion. Shares of 479 companies were traded. Of these, 282 closed higher, 158 fell, and 39 remained unchanged. Trust Brokerage was the volume leader with trading in 57.5 million shares, rising Rs0.63 to close at Rs3.99.

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  • Baker McKenzie Advises Credicorp in Its Acquisition of Helm Bank USA | Newsroom

    Baker McKenzie Advises Credicorp in Its Acquisition of Helm Bank USA | Newsroom

    Baker McKenzie client Credicorp Ltd. has announced that its subsidiary, Banco de Crédito del Perú (BCP), has entered into an agreement to acquire 100% of the issued and outstanding shares of Helm Bank USA for USD 180 million, subject to customary price adjustments at closing.

    Helm Bank, a Florida state-chartered community bank, reported USD 1.1 billion in assets and USD 106.8 million in shareholders’ equity as of September 30, 2025. The acquisition aligns with Credicorp’s strategy to enhance its cross-border capabilities by serving internationally active clients and bolsters its ability to meet the growing needs of Latin American clients while preserving Helm Bank’s legacy as a community-focused institution.

    Led by New York/Miami-based M&A and Capital Markets Partners Federico Cuadra Del Carmen and Steven Canner, the core Baker McKenzie team includes:

    M&A and Capital Markets: Laura Estrada (New York), Zach Bassen (New York), Santiago Corcuera (New York), Adam Buehler (Miami), Zach Bethel (New York), Jaime Trujillo (Bogotá), Ricardo Trejos (Bogotá), Francisco Munoz (Bogotá), Vedant Sharma (New York)

    Tax: Kai Kramer (Houston), Ross Staine (Houston), Glenn Fox (New York)

    Employment & Benefits: Christopher Guldberg (Chicago), Annika Morin (Chicago), Kimberly Franko (New York), Danielle Gibbons (New York), Mecole Tate (San Francisco), Daniela Lievano (Bogotá), Victoria Moreno (Bogotá)

    Intellectual Property: Pamela Church (New York), Alysha Preston (New York), Marcela Pertusi Hernández (New York)

    Data Privacy: Cristina Messerschmidt (Chicago)

    Real Estate: Sarah Winston (Chicago), Paulina Timmer (New York)

    Finance: Angie Muñoz (Bogotá)

    “A heartfelt congratulations to the entire Credicorp deal team on this historic transaction, we at Baker are incredibly honored to have been entrusted with this momentous multijurisdictional mandate with such strategic importance,” said Federico reflecting on the transaction.

    A transactional powerhouse with more than 2,700 deal lawyers in more than 40jurisdictions, Baker McKenzie is a market-leader in cross-border transactions. The team provides broad market, sector and legal know-how in Latin America, advising on some of the most significant transactions and legal matters in the region. Working closely across practice groups and offices, they group helps clients capitalize on business, trade and investment opportunities in Latin America and execute their global growth strategies.

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  • Ontario International Airport’s ONT+ Visitor Pass Program nears 100,000 users – Ontario International Airport

    1. Ontario International Airport’s ONT+ Visitor Pass Program nears 100,000 users  Ontario International Airport
    2. Ontario International Airport’s ONT+ Visitor Pass Program nears 100,000 users  PR Newswire
    3. Some airports now allowing people to use guest passes  WHIO-TV
    4. Meet you at the gate: OAK airport guest pass allows non-ticketed visitors through security  Piedmont Exedra
    5. Pittsburgh Joins Seattle, Philadelphia, Orlando, San Antonio, Oakland, Kansas, And More In New U.S. Airports’ Bold Move To Reopen Secure Areas For Non-Ticketed Guests, Revolutionizing Travel Experience  Travel And Tour World

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  • Exploring the impact of digital technology, circular technology and public management on environmental sustainability in emerging economies

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  • A year of fragile resilience in charts

    A year of fragile resilience in charts

    This article is an on-site version of our Chris Giles on Central Banks newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every Tuesday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newsletters

    If there were two words to describe the global economy in 2025, they would be fragility and resilience. The outcomes have generally been better than feared, especially in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s regular assaults on the rules-based international order. But cracks have been showing and everyone has been cautious.

    The following 10 charts, many that are kept up-to-date on the FT’s Monetary Policy Radar site or its inflation tracker page, highlight this volatile, but ultimately benign, year.

    A year of looser monetary policy

    The year 2025 will be known as one of cheaper money, with policy interest rates falling in most countries. Following the extraordinary global tightening of policy after the world emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic facing strong demand growth, supply restrictions and higher interest rates, 2024 and 2025 have been years of some normalisation.

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    Cooling inflation has allowed central banks to ease policy rates down at a gradual pace, as they sought to find balance between activity and rising prices in the post-Covid economy.

    The exceptions to this broad global trend have been Japan — which is converging on normality from a long period of too low inflation — and a few countries, including Brazil, that had excessive domestic stimulus, leading to continued inflationary problems.

    Inflation not quite back to normal

    The post-Covid inflation surge is now in the past, but its lingering effects are still being felt in many economies. For the Eurozone and Japan this has been beneficial, with headline and core measures now closer to their 2 per cent targets, having been below these levels before the pandemic. There have been no “last-mile” difficulties in inflation reduction here.

    The chart below shows the annualised rates over six months and three months, demonstrating that more recent trends have also shown stability. This is most evident in the FT core measure of inflation, a statistically optimised amalgamation of a large number of core measures of inflation.

    Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

    If the Eurozone and Japan demonstrate an almost perfect shift towards low and stable inflation, the US and UK have faced more difficulty. Headline and core US inflation have been stuck just below 3 per cent as Trump’s tariffs raised goods prices. This has created a tension between the price stability and maximum employment elements of the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate. Towards the end of 2025, the Fed judged that the last-mile inflation problem was likely to be temporary and continued to cut rates.

    In the UK, a sharp fiscal tightening that encouraged companies to raise prices led to a similar inflation problem, which only eased right at the end of the year. The Bank of England cut rates gradually through this period, although there was significant dissent on the Monetary Policy Committee about the wisdom of the monetary loosening.

    Stronger activity than feared

    The most pleasing aspect of the 2025 global economy has been the surprising strength of activity in the face of US tariffs. Partly because they were not efficiently applied, partly because they were scaled back and partly because they did not lead to a more wide-ranging trade war, global growth forecasts have been regularly revised higher this year.

    Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

    Global growth — projected by the IMF in October to be 3.2 per cent in 2025 — is similar to that in 2024, the 2026 projection, and the long-term average of 3.4 per cent since 1980.

    Normality returning to labour markets

    There has been much focus about rising unemployment during 2025 in the US and UK and falling unemployment in the Eurozone. But the more significant feature that applies to all these labour markets is a return towards pre-Covid normality.

    The chart below of Beveridge curves for the US, Eurozone, UK and Japan highlights the link between job vacancies and unemployment. Economies will generally have higher unemployment when vacancies are low. But after Covid, they suffered a period of very high demand for workers (high vacancies) while having high unemployment, indicating that workers were not well matched for the available jobs.

    Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

    This is now returning to normal everywhere and signals a shift towards normality in labour markets, whether the outcome has brought higher unemployment (US and UK) or lower joblessness (Eurozone). If anything, the Eurozone is converging towards the more dynamic labour markets of the US and UK.

    Confidence in equities

    Aside from the severe loss of confidence in April after Trump’s initial announcement of steep “reciprocal tariffs”, stock markets have performed very strongly, leading to frequent warnings that valuations were in bubble territory.

    Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

    When valued in dollars, the S&P 500 performed the worst among comparable advanced economy indices, even if its gains were more than 15 per cent this year. Large European stocks saw their values rise over 30 per cent, partly due to better performance than in the US and partly due to the appreciation of the euro against the dollar.

    A variety of fiscal ambitions

    Lower interest rates, disinflation, stronger than expected activity, a continued normalisation of labour markets and strong equity returns demonstrate the resilience of 2025. From here, everything is a little more fragile, indicating growing risks to the outlook.

    The pandemic forced most countries to run loose fiscal policy, but there was no clear ambition in most countries to tighten the ship in 2025. Yes, the UK imposed large tax increases, and many other European economies imposed smaller ones. Mexico and India planned significant improvements in their structural deficits.

    Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

    But this was offset by a planned loosening in the fiscal positions of China, Brazil, Canada and Russia to offset perceived economic weakness. Overall, fiscal deficits remained high, with debt burdens becoming less sustainable in most large economies. The fiscal and monetary mix will become ever more important for central banks so long as this continues.

    Budget credibility is weak

    Countries that legislated to tighten fiscal policy in 2025 got little credit from government bond markets for their actions. In large part this was because their moves were seen to lack credibility. Throughout 2025, 10-year government bond yields were high and stable in the US and UK and low and rising in the Eurozone and Japan.

    Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

    These trends came as short-term interest rates fell, increasing the gradient of the yield curve everywhere, as the chart above shows. This was most noticeable in Japan and continental Europe, where Germany’s fiscal expansion underpinned a rise in its own long-term borrowing costs, bringing them in line with other Eurozone economies.

    A dollar round trip, a weak yen and a stronger euro

    Compared with the period just before the 2024 US presidential election, exchange rates have moved significantly in 2025, although in ways that few predicted.

    After Trump’s election victory, the dollar strengthened on anticipation of tariffs (which usually come with currency appreciation as imports are deterred). Instead, the US president’s duties initially scared investors so much that the dollar depreciated and the euro appreciated. For the dollar this was a round trip, ending 2025 close to its level in October 2024 against the currencies of US trading partners.

    Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

    The euro ended the year about 5 per cent stronger, helping the disinflation process without severely undermining activity. Sterling was unusually a beacon of stability throughout this period, while the yen fell sharply again in the second half of 2025, putting pressure on the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates.

    An improving macro mood

    The sentiment of all articles in the Financial Times, weighted by their economic relevance, was volatile in 2025. But there was a distinct upward trajectory towards the end of the year.

    Strong stock market performance, continued global economic resilience and interest rates gradually returning to normal have led to a more optimistic tenor in my colleagues’ reporting. This compares with a trough recorded in April, at a time of Trump tariff announcements and weak financial market performance.

    Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

    The big question is whether this resilience will last long into 2026. Signs of improving productivity in the US are promising, while weak government finances and the remaining disinflation still pose risks.

    The central banking aviary takes all sorts

    With this rather mixed picture, it is not surprising that central banks have not co-ordinated their language at year-end.

    The FT’s assessment of central bankers’ messages shows the Fed having become more dovish during 2025 as it moved from worries about tariff inflation to concerns about the labour market. The European Central Bank has become more neutral in accordance with its communication being in a “good place”. The BoE has been cutting rates while sounding hawkish, while the BoJ has been genuinely hawkish at year-end.

    Let’s hope 2026 brings more of the resilience we enjoyed this year and less of the fragility we have had to endure.

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    Central Banks is edited by Harvey Nriapia

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    EBRD, EU and ProCredit Bank Skopje boost MSME financing in North Macedonia

    • EBRD unfunded portfolio guarantee of up to €25 million to ProCredit Bank Skopje
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    “This initiative, implemented through a portfolio guarantee scheme, enhances support for MSMEs in North Macedonia and represents a significant step towards their further development. It reaffirms our longstanding cooperation with the EBRD, supported by the EU, as well as our long-term commitment to fostering the development of the real economy. Through this guarantee, ProCredit Bank can expand lending to market segments that tend to face limited access to finance – in particular, businesses led by women and young entrepreneurs, as well as rural micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. We believe that this approach will contribute to strengthening their resilience and will support sustainable, long-term growth,” said Milan Damchevski, Management Board member of ProCredit Bank.

    The EBRD is a leading institutional investor in North Macedonia, with more than €3 billion invested in supporting the country’s sustainable development, infrastructure, private-sector growth and regional integration.

     

     

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    Kate Stevens, who had travelled from her home in Canterbury, Kent, was with her son who lives in in Enfield, east London.

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    CALC orders 30 more Airbus A320neo Family aircraft

    Toulouse, France, 30 December 2025 – China Aircraft Leasing Group Holdings Limited (CALC) has signed a firm order with Airbus for 30 A320neo Family aircraft to satisfy strong demand for the aircraft from its customer base.

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    #CALC @Airbus #A320Family

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