Aurelia Butler

“There have been efforts made in the financial sector to lower interest rates on new loans, but those efforts need to continue for more people to feel the change,” Kim Joo-hyun, Chairman of the Financial Services Commission, said during a meeting with the heads of the country’s five major financial groups. Kim said financial companies should try to minimise spill-over effects on retail customers as much as possible despite rising interest rates in financial markets. Despite recent bank troubles in the United States and Europe, the local financial industry and markets have remained comparably stable, thanks to preemptive and coordinated efforts by the government, central bank and the industry, Kim said. More

Low-paid workers will receive a pay rise set to match inflation as the UK’s minimum wage increases to £10.42 per hour from April, the Low Pay Commission said on Friday.The 92p rise in the main rate of the national living wage represents a 9.7 per cent increase on 2022 and means 2mn workers will now be paid at or close to the statutory earnings floor, according to the LPC, which advises the government on policy.Bryan Sanderson, LPC chair, said he was “confident that today’s increase is unlikely to have a detrimental impact” on jobs, and would help those who felt high inflation most acutely.Consumer price inflation stood at 10.4 per cent in February. But Nye Cominetti, economist at the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, said that since inflation was expected to fall to about 7 per cent in April, low-paid workers were “set to enjoy a rare real-terms pay boost” even as average UK wage growth, which eased to 6.5 per cent at the turn of the year, continued to lag the rise in prices.The boost to wages for the lowest paid will have knock-on effects, as employers seek to ensure that jobs higher up the pay scale remain attractive. Cominetti said this could benefit a further 5mn workers.However, it is unlikely to change a broader trend of slowing wage growth that the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee called attention to when it raised interest rates last week.The committee said earnings growth in the private sector in particular had “fallen significantly” and could undershoot its forecasts.Surveys published by the BoE show companies expect pay reviews in the second half of this year to result in lower wage awards than in 2022, reflecting lower inflation and a weaker jobs market.“Organisations can see the profile of inflation and they can see things are coming down . . . equally trade unions’ and employees’ expectations will also be lower,” said Sheila Attwood, content manager XpertHR, a research firm that collects data on pay awards.XpertHR’s research suggests pay awards peaked at an average of 6 per cent in the first quarter of 2023 and are already on a downward trend, with the average for the full year set to ease to 5 per cent.Even after this April’s increase, the real value of the minimum wage will be below the peak it reached in April 2021, before high inflation took hold.

It will pass this peak only in April 2024, when on the LPC’s latest estimates the main adult hourly rate will need to rise to £11.16 to meet a government goal of raising it to two-thirds of median earnings.Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said the increase was “not going to lift the pressure on hard-pressed families”, with food inflation running at double the rate of the pay increase and the government’s support for household energy bills set to end.However, the LPC said the outlook for the household incomes of minimum wage workers was more positive than in previous years, once changes to taxes and welfare benefits had also been factored in.This is because of a government decision to uprate benefits in line with inflation, following on from previous changes allowing workers to keep more benefits income as their wages rise. More

By Joey Roulette(Reuters) -Rocket maker Virgin Orbit Holdings on Thursday said it was laying off about 85% of staff because it had not been able to raise new investment. Shares of the company, which is controlled by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, fell 38% in after hours trade. About 675 employees will lose their jobs, and the company expects to take related charges of about $15 million, Virgin Orbit said in a regulatory filing. The move was the result of “the company’s inability to secure meaningful funding,” the filing said. Virgin Orbit went public in 2021 through a blank-check deal, where it raised $255 million less than expected. In addition to the recent failure to raise funds, the January failure of a rocket launch increased pressure on the company. Reuters reported last week that Texas-based Matthew Brown had been in talks to invest $200 million in the company. Those talks collapsed, two people familiar with the discussions who asked not to be identified, told Reuters on Monday. Virgin Orbit in a statement last week, after Brown appeared on CNBC, said it “notes the comments made by Matthew Brown in relation to the company,” and added that it was in investment discussions with potential partners but declined to comment further. Brown declined to comment on Monday. Since November, Branson’s Virgin Group has provided $50 million in financing to the satellite launch company in debt secured against its equipment and other assets in the event of a bankruptcy, according to securities filings. Virgin Orbit furloughed nearly all its 750 employees on March 15 in what a spokesperson called an “operational pause,” while the company sought a financial lifeline that would allow it to focus on rocket design improvement. A small group of employees returned to work on March 23 to focus on rocket engine work, an email to staff said at the time. The company expects layoffs to be substantially complete by April 3. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on Thursday that Republicans could act on their own to address the federal government’s debt ceiling, after months of demands that President Joe Biden first agree to spending cuts went nowhere. In the latest sign of growing Republican exasperation over Biden’s refusal to negotiate a deal on spending in exchange for a debt ceiling hike, McCarthy said his party is close to agreeing on a package that could pass the House of Representatives without participation from the president or Democrats in Congress.”If the president doesn’t act, we will,” McCarthy told reporters at a news conference.”We have been reasonable, responsible, asked to sit down with the president for months. He has made the decision that he wants to put the economy in jeopardy. I don’t know what more I can do,” the California Republican said.McCarthy did not say what a Republican-only proposal would look like.But Republicans in recent weeks have discussed a variety of options they could consider in exchange for a vote to lift the debt ceiling. They have ranged from forcing sharp cuts in spending, to imposing new work requirements on social programs for the poor to new steps to deregulate industry.Some have also suggested temporarily suspending the debt ceiling to avoid default – a short-term elimination of the limit that avoids default without requiring a specific increase in the $31.4 trillion limit.Failure to raise, or temporarily suspend, the limit by this summer could lead to a U.S. government default, which would be damaging for the world economy and financial markets that have already been rattled by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank (OTC:SBNY), as well as the troubles of Credit Suisse.The White House showed no sign of budging after McCarthy’s remarks. “We should not be negotiating on the debt ceiling. We should just not be doing that. The president has been clear,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told a news briefing.  House action on a Republican-only package could be symbolic at best, if the proposal failed to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.Congress has the authority to raise the debt ceiling without conditions. Nonpartisan congressional researchers predict that lawmakers have until sometime between early June and September to address the borrowing limit and avert default.Without offering specific proposals, Republicans have called for clawing back unspent COVID-19 pandemic funds, resetting nondefense discretionary spending to earlier levels and imposing work requirements on social programs that benefit the poor. Biden has responded by demanding that lawmakers address the borrowing limit first without strings attached. He has also called on House Republicans to produce their own fiscal 2024 budget, which remains weeks – if not months – away.The president released his own $6.8 trillion 2024 budget on March 9, promising to reduce federal deficits by nearly $3 trillion and extend the life of the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations.McCarthy has vowed not to raise taxes and told CNBC this week that Republicans were ready to lay out $4 trillion in spending cuts.Polling shows Americans support using the debt ceiling talks to address the deficit – but prefer Biden’s path of higher taxes. Nearly three-quarters of Americans want Republicans and Democrats to reach a deal on the debt ceiling, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted March 14-20. Close to 60% of respondents said the debt ceiling provides a good opportunity to push the tough issues of spending cuts or tax hikes.When asked to choose whether they favored cutting the deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy and on corporations or cutting spending on programs that help the poor and elderly, 69% of respondents to the Reuters/Ipsos poll picked tax hikes, versus 19% who picked the spending cuts. Another 12% said nothing needed to be done. Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans favored tax hikes.Representative Kevin Hern, who heads the conservative Republican Study Committee, told reporters that Republicans could accept a debt ceiling deal that includes work requirements on social programs instead of spending cuts as a way to control inflation.”I think it would be welcomed,” Hern said. “The biggest thing driving inflation today is this number of jobs and number of workers gap being persistently high … Simply holding spending flat is not going to work.” More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets from Jamie McGeever.Asian markets go into the final trading day of the quarter in a buoyant mood, ready to face Friday’s barrowload of regional economic data with a sense of optimism and resilience that would barely have been believable a few weeks ago.Maybe it is just window-dressing for the end of the quarter, but investors are driving risky assets higher across the board, doing their best to make the banking crisis of March 2023 look like a blip in the rear-view mirror. Q1 world markets, https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/klpygqylxpg/Three.PNG Another solid performance on Wall Street on Thursday should set the tone for Asian stocks on Friday, with tech again leading the way. U.S. financials was the only S&P 500 sector to fall on Thursday, but they are still up 3% this week, the best week since January.It remains to be seen how successful U.S. authorities have been in ring-fencing banks from contagion, and there is little doubt that deteriorating credit conditions will be a drag on growth.Right now though, it’s ‘risk on’ globally – the MSCI Asia ex-Japan equity index is up three weeks in a row, the MSCI World is having its best week since mid-January, and the Hang Seng tech index is at a six-week high.Although bond yields and the Fed rate outlook have picked up in the last two weeks, they are still significantly below the historic peaks pre-banking shock. Tech, in particular, is on a roll.Further indications that China is reversing the sweeping regulatory crackdown on its technology sector of recent years is also adding fuel to the rally. JD (NASDAQ:JD).com shares jump 8% on restructuring news, https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/zgvobaxozpd/JD.png After investors gave Alibaba (NYSE:BABA)’s restructuring plans this week a big thumbs up, e-commerce firm JD.com said on Thursday it plans to spin off its property and industrial units and list them on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.U.S.-listed shares in JD.com jumped 8% on Thursday, U.S.-listed shares of Alibaba are up 20% in the last three sessions, the Nasdaq 100 is flirting with a bull market – up more than 20% from its December low – and the wider Nasdaq is up 15% this year.On the Asian data front on Friday, investors have no shortage of potential market-movers, including: Chinese PMIs for March; Japanese unemployment, retail sales and industrial production; and private sector credit figures from Australia. Emerging market currencies, https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/movakwarqva/Pasted%20image%201680194665862.png Here are three key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Friday:- China NBS manufacturing and services PMI (March)- Euro zone flash CPI inflation (March)- U.S. PCE inflation (February) (By Jamie McGeever; Editing by Josie Kao) More