Pandemic Financial News

Inflation is continuing to bite Canada’s restaurant industry, as sales have dipped across the country and consumers are facing higher menu prices.

The Bank of Canada is warning that waning productivity growth in the country is an “emergency” that can force higher interest rates and limit rising wages for Canadians.

U.S. office markets are suffering from soaring vacancy rates, a record amount of available sublease space, and rising defaults. But curiously, office rents are holding steady or even climbing.

Hedge fund Citadel is going all out on Miami. Having relocated some Citadel Securities staff to the Four Seasons Palm Beach during the pandemic, it's since poached the executive chef of the hotel to be its «global head of culinary» and has commissioned architects Foster + Partners to build a new«iconic tower» office space on a 2.5 acre waterfront plot at Brickell Bay as it moves its head office to Miami from Chicago.

As banks cast around for additional costs to cut in the absence of a big rebound in revenues, a particular kind of person is at the top of their chopping lists: the one who was hired at the height of the pandemic. 

IIFL Finance, the country’s second-largest gold loan non-bank finance company (NBFC), from disbursing fresh gold loans. This comes on the heels of the finance ministry last month asking all banks to review their gold loan portfolios, according to news agency PTI. The ministry flagged issues strikingly similar to the IIFL case, including inadequate collateral, repayments in cash, and problems around collection of fees.

final round of talks on a landmark pandemic accord faces a frantic last push this week, with countries still pulling in different directions on how to handle future global health crises. The last week of negotiations runs until Thursday with nations trying to hammer out an agreement to make sure the world is better prepared to deal with the next pandemic — or better still, stamp it out before it even happens.

California's unemployment rate is now the highest in the country

The Conference Board on Tuesday issues its consumer confidence index for March; on Wednesday workplace uniform company Cintas reports its latest earnings and on Thursday the National Association of Realtors releases its pending home sales report for Fe...

pandemic accord faces a frantic last push this week, with countries still pulling in different directions on how to handle future global health crises. The last week of negotiations runs until Thursday with nations trying to hammer out an agreement to make sure the world is better prepared to deal with the next pandemic — or better still, stamp it out before it even happens.

The biggest American whiskey is losing its punch. Demand has been sliding for Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 for months and the company behind it, Brown-Forman, is forecasting a sluggish U.S.

As Fed policymakers stuck to their path of lowering rates this year, the Bank of England also moved closer to cuts. Here are some of the charts that appeared on Bloomberg this week on the latest developments in the global economy:

booming ecommerce market is spurring a packaging makeover among consumer goods makers, as they chase the growing number of online shoppers. Companies are seeking to make their products more robust to survive the rigours of shipping, with some saying they have already seen results, in the form of fewer returns. ITC, for instance, changed the cap of shower gels to prevent leakage even when there is no scotch tape. This is one among changes in the packaging design for most of its fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). Parle Products is adding protective layers for its `30-80 biscuit packs, which mostly sell online. It has also introduced a separate outer packing for bundled biscuit packs to be sold online, to ensure they are not broken. Goods sold online change hands more times than offline, often being roughly handled by delivery personnel, company executives said, adding that the chances of leaks or transit damage increase while shipping individual units.

By Amina Niasse

By Andrea Shalal

Just as being wealthy is no guarantee for an excellent credit score, being unemployed is also no certainty for the poor credit score. 

MUMBAI : D’Decor, the nation’s leading manufacturer of curtains and upholstery, is set to significantly expand its capacity, aiming to boost its daily output from 140,000 metres of fabric to over 200,000 metres within the next four years, managing director Sanjay Arora said. In an interview, he stressed the importance of meeting rising consumer demand while preserving the company’s competitive edge. "We are a zero-debt company, and all expansion will be funded through internal accruals," he said.

LONDON (Reuters) — British retail sales unexpectedly held steady in February despite wet weather hitting in-store sales, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics on Friday that added to signs the economy is recovering from last year's mild recession.

Investing.com-- Most Asian currencies fell sharply on Friday, coming under pressure from a rebound in the dollar as an unexpected interest rate cut by the Swiss National Bank pushed currency traders squarely into the greenback.  

Federal regulators said large grocery chains used their size and scale to keep shelves stocked during the pandemic, edging out smaller rivals when most stores struggled with product shortages and distribution bottlenecks. The Federal Trade Commission said in a report released Thursday on the impact of Covid-19 supply-chain disruptions that large retailers used their size to pressure suppliers of food and household goods, the agency said, including putting stricter delivery requirements into place and fining vendors that didn’t comply.

Nothing has spurred the entrepreneurial spirit of Gen Z quite like the COVID-19 pandemic and that extends to launching nonprofits