(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Remember negative oil prices and the fear that every storage tank on the planet would get filled to the brim? That seems a long time ago, with West Texas Intermediate crude now hitting $40 a barrel and the buildup of stockpiles poised to go into reverse. The warning sent by that trip below zero was heeded. Oil production was slashed and the crisis averted.But if you were hoping for a quick, V-shaped recovery in oil demand, look away now.The International Energy Agency published its latest oil market outlook last week, pushing its quarterly forecast out to the end of 2021 for the first time. It doesn’t think demand will have fully recovered by then. In the final quarter of next year it predicts global oil demand will still be running about 2 million barrels a day below pre-pandemic levels, and more than 4% below where it might reasonably have been expected to be in the absence of the...
None of the $2.1 billion missing from scandal-hit German payments firm Wirecard AG appears to have entered the Philippine financial system, the central bank said on Sunday. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Benjamin Diokno said in a statement the Southeast Asian country's biggest lenders, BDO Unibank and Bank of the Philippine Islands , suffered no losses, despite having been named in connection with the missing funds. The chief executive of Wirecard, Markus Braun, who built the company into one of the hottest financial technology investments in Europe and a rare tech champion for Germany, quit on Friday as the company faces a cash crunch after saying it may have been the victim of fraud....
None of the $2.1 billion missing from scandal-hit German payments firm Wirecard AG appears to have entered the Philippine financial system, the central bank said on Sunday. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Benjamin Diokno said in a statement the Southeast Asian country's biggest lenders, BDO Unibank and Bank of the Philippine Islands, suffered no losses, despite having been named in connection with the missing funds. The chief executive of Wirecard, Markus Braun, who built the company into one of the hottest financial technology investments in Europe and a rare tech champion for Germany, quit on Friday as the company faces a cash crunch after saying it may have been the victim of fraud....
(Bloomberg) -- Two months after its dire predictions of the steepest recession in almost a century, the International Monetary Fund will release new global economic forecasts this week that will probably look even worse.Officials at the Washington-based Fund have warned that a revised outlook due on Wednesday may feature a more pessimistic view than in April. Back then, they said the “Great Lockdown” caused by the coronavirus would force a global contraction of 3% this year.A gloomier forecast might reflect their assessment of the severity of damage caused by the widespread shutdown in activity. The U.K. economy, for example, instantly shrank by a fifth in April alone.Any glimmers of hope the IMF can impart may channel optimism that the worst of the outbreak has passed in some countries, allowing them to ease restrictions. That would chime with purchasing manager indexes from Japan to Europe to the U.S., due on Tuesday, all...
