Aurelia Butler

The agreement will help the company to reduce or reallocate about $150 million of cash interest and fees, and would give it immediate access to a revolving borrowing capacity of about $21 million.Known for its plastic airtight storage containers and bowls, Tupperware has seen a sharp drop in demand recently as consumers limit discretionary purchases amid higher prices and fears of recession. The company had on April 7 raised doubt about its ability to continue as going concern after failing to improve its business for about three years. The company reported $705.4 million in total debt for 2022.In May, it signed investment bank Moelis (NYSE:MC) & Co to help explore strategic options and said it has found additional prior period misstatements in its financial reporting.The agreement also paves the way for the extension of the maturity of about $348 million of principal and reallocated interest and fees to 2027 with payment-in-kind interest.It is also expected to aid a reduction of amortization payments required to be paid through 2025 by about $55 million.Despite the going concerns, the company’s shares have gained nearly 541% between July 21 and July 31, mirroring the moves seen in financially challenged companies like Bed Bath & Beyond (OTC:BBBYQ) and other “meme” stocks known for their popularity with retail investors. More

The head of a US congressional committee has urged President Joe Biden to widen forthcoming limits on investments in China to cover stocks and bonds, saying anything less would “fail to address the bulk of the security threat” posed by Beijing. Mike Gallagher, chair of the House China committee, told the president that a new executive order expected soon from the White House must cover US participation in Chinese public markets, not just direct investments from private equity and venture capital groups. “Public market investments represent the majority of US capital flows to the People’s Republic of China. Any rules that exempt them will fail to address the bulk of the national security threat,” the Wisconsin Republican wrote in an August 3 letter to Biden seen by the Financial Times. Gallagher wrote in the letter that a “sizeable” part of the estimated $1.3bn in US investment in China finances “the Communist party’s abhorrent human rights abuses” and groups with connections to the People’s Liberation Army.The order, expected from Biden next week, will follow efforts to restrict Chinese access to US technology in areas such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. It is designed to restrict the flow of US capital to groups connected to China’s military.On Tuesday, the House China committee accused BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and MSCI, a compiler of stock market indices, of “unconscionable” profiting from investments that help the Chinese military.US officials have suggested the new order will require companies to notify the government about investments in the sensitive sectors, and be banned in some cases. Critics have worried that the order will be weaker than some in the administration sought, partly because of lobbying from US companies and some allies.“If American capital continues to flow to Chinese military companies, we are at risk of funding our own destruction,” Gallagher told the FT.“Wall Street needs to recognise that investing in critical technology sectors in the PRC endangers our military service members, imperils the targets of the Chinese Communist party’s human rights abuses, and enhances systemic risks for the global economy. That’s a deadly cocktail the American people didn’t order and don’t want to be served.”Gallagher said the order should give investors predictability by not creating an “unnecessarily burdensome” case-by-case screening process. The administration should persuade allies “to follow suit with their own parallel restrictions”, he said.The administration’s efforts to build a consensus with international partners have been complicated by the countries’ different legal systems and some allies’ reluctance to go as far as more hawkish US figures had wanted.Japanese officials said they had no plan to create a similar screening instrument because it would have loopholes as long as companies could channel investments through countries such as the Cayman Islands.

At an EU summit in June, leaders including Germany’s Olaf Scholz did not raise serious concerns about the US moves, suggesting they were satisfied the measures had been sufficiently tempered by months of discussions between the US and G7 partners to find a compromise acceptable to less-hawkish countries such as Germany and France.“Of course we have differing views . . . we are ready to have a stable and constructive relationship with China,” said one senior EU diplomat. “But the US sees the added value of us being together rather than divided.”The new executive order will come as the Biden administration tries to update export controls unveiled last October. Big companies including Intel and Qualcomm have voiced concern about the efforts to senior officials. The delay has caused consternation among some allies.Japanese government officials have expressed frustration that the US has still not updated the controls despite earlier putting pressure on Japan and the Netherlands to align their measures with Washington.Noting that the US outbound investment screening could be “watered down” from earlier tougher drafts, one of the Japanese officials said: “It’s almost as if they’re suddenly afraid of upsetting China.” More

After the sharpest tightening in monetary policy for 35 years, UK interest rates may finally be close to a peak. That was the message on Thursday from Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, as he set out forecasts for inflation to inch back to the central bank’s target against a backdrop of near-stagnant economic growth.Starting in December 2021, the BoE has raised its benchmark rate 14 times in swift succession, with the latest quarter point increase taking it to 5.25 per cent. Now, the medicine is finally starting to work.For the first time, the BoE Monetary Policy Committee has said explicitly the policy stance is “restrictive”, with higher borrowing costs increasingly weighing on the economy and cooling inflation.

You are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.

Its latest forecasts suggest if interest rates followed recent financial market expectations — rising to 6 per cent in the near term before falling from 2024 — inflation would return to the BoE’s 2 per cent target within two years. Keeping interest rates at 5.25 per cent for a sustained period would produce similar results.“There is more than one path from here that delivers us back to the target,” Bailey said at a press conference following the MPC rate decision.Policymakers could still raise interest rates further if they see warning signs in the economic data. Consumer price inflation fell more than expected in June, to 7.9 per cent. The BoE is reasonably confident headline inflation will continue falling in the near term, as energy and food prices ease, but it remains worried that rapid wage growth will lead to “sticky” services inflation.

You are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.

“I don’t think it’s time to declare it’s all over and say that we are sticking where we are for the moment . . . We have to remain evidence driven,” said Bailey. “If we get evidence of more persistent inflation then we will have to react to that.”But economists said any further rate rises by the BoE looked likely to be more a matter of “fine tuning” than a significant change in stance.“As monetary policy is now ‘restrictive’, the bar for large further rises in bank rate is high — by definition, tight policy is disinflationary,” said Kallum Pickering, economist at Berenberg. Philip Shaw, economist at Investec, said unless pressures in the labour market turned out to be “considerably more durable than we believe . . . we should be close to the terminal level of bank rate”.However, the MPC also made it clear interest rates were likely to remain higher for longer than in previous tightening cycles, saying it would “ensure that bank rate was sufficiently restrictive for sufficiently long”. “We interpret this as meaning that rates are now close to their peak and will then stay at high levels for some time,” said Andrew Goodwin, economist at the consultancy Oxford Economics, who thinks the BoE will start loosening policy “several months later than in the US and eurozone”.The BoE has come under fire for repeatedly failing to predict the rise and persistence of inflation, which remains far higher in the UK than in many other advanced economies.Bailey said that while the BoE could learn “important lessons” on how to handle big economic shocks — such as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — “I do not think we got monetary policy fundamentally wrong”. However, a BoE victory in the fight against inflation now looks likely to carry a higher cost to the economy than the central bank anticipated in May, when markets were expecting interest rates to follow a much lower path. Traders revised their view after April’s inflation figure was well above the BoE’s forecast.The new BoE forecasts show gross domestic product will be barely increasing in 2024 and 2025, with growth remaining below its pre-pandemic rate in the medium term.Unemployment is also set to rise more than the central bank expected in May, from its current level of 4 per cent to a peak of just below 5 per cent by the autumn of 2026.Bailey sought to cast these forecasts in a positive light, saying the economy had proved much more resilient than feared at the start of the year, partly because household incomes had held up relatively well, and consumers had felt able to use some of their savings to cushion spending.“Unemployment is at a historically low level — that’s good,” Bailey said. “Growth is more resilient. We haven’t had a recession and we’re not forecasting one.“Of course, we would emphasise, monetary policy has had an effect . . . but if we don’t bring inflation down, the effects are worse.”Ben Broadbent, the BoE’s deputy governor for monetary policy, said one reason for the economy’s resilience was that household incomes were now rising again in real terms, with earnings growing faster than inflation as the price of energy and some key imported goods began to fall.

But analysts said even if the economy escaped a recession, the prospect of near-stagnant growth was still a bleak one.The BoE forecast for GDP in 2024 and 2025 looked “exceptionally weak”, said Goodwin of Oxford Economics, but this reinforced the idea “that the BoE views virtually any growth as being inflationary”.James Smith, research director at the Resolution Foundation think-tank, said households were set to pay a high price for “taming inflationary pressures from Britain’s tight labour markets”.He added: “The likely backdrop to an election next year will be falling GDP, higher unemployment and big increases in mortgage repayments.” More