Ukraine Financial News

Global regulators proposed a package of measures to ensure hedge funds and other investors from outside the banking sector are better able to cope with margin and collateral calls in times of market stress.

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and and his Chinese counterpart Dong Jun held talks in nearly 18 months and discussed US-China defence relations and regional and global security issues, the Pentagon said. In the meeting held via videoconference on Tuesday, Austin stressed the importance of keeping military-to-military communication lines between the US and China open, it said. It is the first time since November 2022 that Austin has held talks with his Chinese counterpart when he spoke with the then defence minister of China Wei Fenghe in Cambodia. Dong was appointed China's Defence minister in December. China then named General Li Shangfu as its defence minister.

Telegram messaging app, one of the most popular social media platforms in Ukraine and Russia, will likely cross 1 billion active monthly users within a year, its founder said in remarks published on Tuesday. In a rare interview, Pavel Durov told U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson that the Dubai-based free cloud-based app that allows users to send and receive messages, calls and other files, is spreading like a «forest fire».

Army Training Command (ARTRAC), Lt Gen Manjinder Singh, has said that the war between Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas has been a learning experience for India, as it may face similar warfare practices from terror-hit regions on Pakistan's borders. He said this at the Army Training Command (ARTRAC) investiture ceremony held at the Army Training Command in Shimla on Tuesday. Lt Gen Singh, awarded ARTRAC Unit awards to the Army officials for their noteworthy performance in the year 2022-23.

₹30, or 0.04% to ₹72,999 per 10 grams on MCX. During the day, gold rate hit a high of ₹73,315 level. Silver price closed down by ₹24, or 0.03%, at ₹83,480 per kg on MCX.

Also Read: Explained | Why are crude oil prices elevated after OPEC+ policy decision and how will it impact India? Primorsk on the Baltic handled 10 tankers in three of the past four weeks, possibly reflecting a diversion to exports of crude that would have been processed at refineries hit by Ukrainian drones. The port hasn’t handled more than 11 tankers in a week in data back to the start of 2022. Refining rates are languishing near an 11-month low as repairs continue.

Kremlin reacted coolly on Tuesday to French President Emmanuel Macron's call for a truce in international conflicts during the Paris Olympics, saying Ukraine might use it as an opportunity to regroup and rearm. Suspending armed conflicts under an «Olympic truce» is a longstanding tradition, and Macron said in an interview on Monday that he would work towards achieving one when Paris hosts the Summer Games from July 26 to Aug. 11. Asked about this, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that both President Vladimir Putin and the Russian military had «noticed that, as a rule, the Kyiv regime uses such ideas, such initiatives to try to regroup, to try to rearm, and so on and so forth».

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has told Chinese leader Xi Jinping who hosted him in Beijing that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine threatens global security, in an apparent call for China to apply greater pressure on its neighbor to end the war

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called for fair competition in trade relations with China while warning about dumping and overproduction while speaking to students in Shanghai on Monday

DUBAI—Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Persian Gulf states have tried to avoid taking a position on America’s geopolitical rivalries in recent years, staying neutral in the Ukraine war and building ties with China. With Israel and Iran in open conflict, they might be forced to choose a side. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates struggled to stay on the sidelines when it became clear last week that Iran would attack Israel in retaliation for a strike in Syria that killed senior Iranian military officers.

Cold War II: The world needs to minimize hot eruptions in West Asia Sullivan was to travel to India earlier this year in February but because of the global crisis in Ukraine and West Asia, the annual review meeting on iCET was rescheduled. "Due to ongoing events in the Middle East, NSA Sullivan has postponed his trip to India this week," a US embassy spokesperson said.

₹9,600 a tonne with effect from Tuesday. The levy stood at ₹6,800 a tonne for the past two weeks.

Volodymyr Zelensky urged allies on Monday to show the same «unity» towards Ukraine as Israel, which said it repelled an Iranian attack over the weekend with Western support. Ukraine has in recent months grown increasingly frustrated at delays in Western aid, including air defences it says are urgently needed to repel deadly Russian attacks.

Reserve Bank of India announced new steps for rupee-settled global trades, Russian banking major Sberbank said it has seen an uptick in volumes for rupee-rouble payments for Moscow’s imports, with the lender focusing on drawing more foreign clients to the domestic market. “Sberbank offers its corporate clients a convenient way of carrying out settlements in rupees and roubles. Sberbank has now become the main channel for such payments on Russian import operations, with volumes up by seven times last year compared to 2022. More and more companies are taking advantage of it, recognising the attractions of this means of payment,” Anatoly Popov, deputy chairman of the executive board of Sberbank, said exclusively to ET. In July 2022, the RBI said that it would put in place an additional arrangement for invoicing, payment and settlement of exports and imports in rupees. The step, taken in the aftermath of the Ukraine war, was aimed at supporting the increasing interest of global trading in rupees, the central bank said.

PAXG reached an all-time high of $2,855 on April 13 amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East following the missile and drone attack. 

Indian firms are likely to step up mergers and acquisitions (M&As) this year, with deals worth $75 billion estimated in 2024 against about $60 billion last year, said Ganeshan Murugaiyan, head, corporate coverage and advisory, BNP Paribas, India. In an interview to ET, the veteran investment banker pointed out acquisition opportunities in areas where geopolitical volatility had rendered some industries uncompetitive. Edited excerpts: The previous year was a lean one for M&A activity everywhere. What are clients saying about 2024? Last year, volumes were down almost 30-35% from what we saw in prior years. There were many factors, but if you look at 2024, the momentum is building up quite a bit. One is that clearly you have a lot of M&As within India. When I say domestic, a big component which has got added now is private equity. In a lot of assets, controlling stake by private equity may change hands this year. In India, my guess is that M&As should be somewhere around $75 billion versus around $60 billion last year.

Raw material prices are also starting to show initial signs of inflation after moderating previously, indicating price increases in some categories could be in the offing. Most consumer goods companies raised prices by more than a quarter in the past two years to offset rising costs under heads such as raw materials, supply chain and energy.

A review of the Bank of England’s economic forecasting undertaken by the former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve has found “significant shortcomings” that should be addressed to better inform future interest rate decisions

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has arrived in China on a visit focused on the increasingly tense economic relationship between the sides and differences over Russia's invasion of Ukraine

The U.S. and U.K. will begin restricting the trade of new Russian-origin metals — including aluminum, copper and nickel — on global metal exchanges and in derivatives trading

The biggest U.S. airlines and their unions are asking the Biden administration to stop approving more flights to the United States by Chinese airlines