The Financial Times turned heads when it got the scoop that the Venezuelan government is to reveal a debt pile of over $240 billions in its recently announced foreign debt restructuring, well over previous estimates of around $150-200 bn. Although this was sold as a shocker, it’s actually misleading because it validates the false claim that all of Venezuela’s incurred debt (whether written in a contract registered with the SEC or a whisky-soaked napkin) has the same validity and ought to be paid or else to re-enter international finance markets and attract foreign investment. The truth is that not all debts are created equal, nor do Venezuelans have to pay for all of it. So what is the actual extent of debt Venezuela has to pay? And given the recent announcement, what are the chances of Delcy & Co. of pulling this off?
Venezuela faces late payments and arrears for sovereign and PDVSA bonds issued in the US with ironclad legal and conflict-resolution provisions in US courts. All of this debt is easily quantifiable, as it was approved by the Venezuelan parliament, in the case of the Republic, or included in financial statements, in the case of PDVSA. This amounts to $60 bn, plus $40 bn in arrears. This debt is legally valid and backed by evidence, and has many provisions on cross-default and other legal remedies for bondholders. Its successful restructuring is necessary for the country to re-enter international financial markets. Thus, it is the one that requires urgent attention and probably more willingness to compromise. Some question the validity of the 2020 PDVSA bond, which was issued with a lien over the shares of Citgo’s holding company, but a recent ruling by a NY court established that the bond was validly issued, and it was a taste of the results that a strategy of contesting these bonds in courts (with provisions drafted by the best lawyers money can buy) will yield instead of negotiating.
Venezuela also owes $20 bn in unpaid arbitral awards for the expropriation extravaganza of the late Hugo Chávez. These unpaid arbitral awards expose the country to international litigation and seizure of assets, while not as fundamental to restore access to international finance as the bonds. Its payment is necessary to assuage international markets and foreign investors. There is also $4 bn in debt to development banks, which is very important to honor to regain market access and restore investor confidence.
All of this amounts, in a worst-case scenario, to around $200 bn. If the debt restructuring is indeed a serious endeavor, it will focus on renegotiating these amounts, particularly the bonds.
Venezuela also owes around $50 bn to suppliers and contractors of the oil industry. Settling this debt is necessary to significantly increase oil production. However, as much of this debt has not been properly audited and may include creditors involved in corruption schemes, quantifying, negotiating, and paying it will probably take more time, and the focus should be on paying the companies that the country needs to re-engage to increase oil production and recover oil infrastructure.
Venezuela also owes China around $10-20 bn under an “oil-for-loan” financing mechanism from the Chávez era. Given that China is a major global power player, it is important to honor this debt. The Chinese and chavismo had already negotiated oil shipments to service debt, and the Chinese are very well aware of the mistake this scheme was and will probably be accommodating as long as they keep getting paid.
You are probably wondering why I do not mention Cadivi and unpaid FX claims in the total debt. The catch is that unsettled Cadivi claims are not foreign debt proper, but administrative authorizations to convert local currency into FX under a foreign exchange control regime. In past foreign exchange controls in Venezuela, case law determined that these authorizations were not enforceable debt and claimants took the loss and were never paid. This will happen again.
Venezuela also owes Russia around $6 bn. Considering the current circumstances, its restructuring and payment can wait.
Venezuela needs a bailout, which can only come from the IMF. But IMF intervention is an impossible demand right now for Delcy Rodríguez.
All of this amounts, in a worst-case scenario, to around $200 bn. If the debt restructuring is indeed a serious endeavor, it will focus on renegotiating these amounts, particularly the bonds. The Financial Times does not mention where this $40 bn difference comes from. Any debt that was not approved by Congress or was issued not following the legal procedure does not have to be included pari passu with the debt issued to Wall Street and the World Bank, and Venezuela is not obliged to pay it to borrow money again. Argentina did not have to renegotiate all of its debt to re-enter the credit market. Any other hidden debt that comes up during a restructuring can be challenged in court and the Venezuelan government can refuse to pay. We will not further mortgage our country’s future more than necessary to access international credit markets to enrich shady actors who profited from our misery and didn’t even bother to hire good lawyers for when shit hit the fan.
Renegotiating a sovereign debt this massive without the support of the IMF would be daunting to our brightest minds, not to mention to Delcy’s few English-speaking minions. There are huge obstacles in the way. PDVSA remains governed by a 19th-century bankruptcy regime that makes it very difficult to restructure its debt efficiently. Moreover, its bonds do not have collective action clauses, or CACs, meaning they can only be renegotiated with 100% agreement of bondholders, which, like in the case of Argentina, could lead to holdouts and years of litigation. Most of the bonds issued by the Republic do have CACs, so they would be easier to renegotiate with a haircut (reduction in their notional value).
So what is the most likely outcome? I remain skeptical about the seriousness of this whole enterprise. Without IMF support, Venezuela, with meager international reserves and a severe balance-of-payments constraint, simply cannot produce enough foreign currency for necessary imports, much less for servicing debt. This is a severe structural barrier. Venezuela needs a bailout, which can only come from the IMF.
IMF intervention is an impossible demand right now for Delcy Rodríguez. First, because it would imply fiscal austerity that would probably lead to social unrest for an already incredibly unpopular president with zero legitimacy. Additionally, the Washington Consensus has been a bête noire for chavismo since its inception, and would put her even more at odds with factions of her already fragile coalition.
Maybe there is a scenario where they will be able to negotiate some of the debt (probably in predatory terms for Venezuelans) with some liens or guarantees over oil assets. But considering the dire state of the country’s finances, the absence of the IMF from the process, the lack of any macroeconomic reforms that will enable the country to service debt again, and the “technical shortcomings” of the people running the show, even this seems unlikely.
The announcement of the debt restructuring was more of a gimmick to gain time—one of chavismo’s true gifts—by the Rodrigato to appease both the US and the naive bondholders who helped to put her in power. But, once again, there are no shortcuts to any meaningful change in the country’s economy that do not involve the now dreaded T-word: “transition.”
Published on
Crude and US Treasury yields rose together as traders judged that the exchange of compensation demands between the US and Iran has pushed any potential deal further out of reach.
The US president said on Monday he had told his negotiators to seek payment from Iran for Americans killed and wounded in attacks he attributes to Tehran going back decades, including the bombing of the USS Cole in the year 2000 and for Iranians killed in protest crackdowns.
In a follow-up post on Truth Social he expanded on the demand, saying Iran should also pay for “the damages and death caused to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza”.
Tehran, whose representatives had sought compensation for five months of US and Israeli bombardment, says the Strait of Hormuz will stay shut until Washington lifts its naval blockade, ends sanctions and releases frozen Iranian assets.
The front month contract on Brent traded at around $89.8 a barrel on Tuesday and West Texas Intermediate at about $84.2, both up roughly 2.5%.
The US bond market read it the same way, with yields rising across the US curve in a modest global sell-off, the two-year over 4.25%, the ten-year above 4.7% and the thirty-year higher than 5.27%. The yields for all durations are trading at the highs of this year.
Since yields move inversely to prices, the rise means investors are selling government debt as they expect that costlier oil will feed into inflation and strengthen the case for higher interest rates.
Money markets now put roughly even odds on a Federal Reserve rate hike in September, with July inflation data due on Wednesday.
The current stalling of US-Iran negotiations is deliberate as US President Donald Trump appears to have been favouring a slower approach as of late.
The US president told Axios in an interview published on Sunday that the US is “low-keying it,” meaning Washington was only semi-negotiating and content to watch Iran’s inflation and empty coffers do the work, a signal he is prepared to let economic pressure mount rather than order a fresh military campaign.
In the Oval Office on Monday, he struck a triumphant note, claiming the US controls “100%” of the Strait of Hormuz, that only the US Navy holds sway in the region, that American forces have swept it clear of Iranian mines and that the blockade of Iranian ports is impenetrable.
However, shipping data tells another story.
Confirmed crossings have run at 6 to 11 vessels a day recently, against the 130 to 140 daily before the war, according to Kpler data, leaving traffic at a fraction of normal levels throughout the five-month conflict.
FabrikaCr
HSBC remained bullish on global equities, saying concerns around AI, rates, and geopolitics were increasingly reflected in market prices while fundamentals continue to improve.
“We remain comfortably bullish on global equities,” Alastair Pinder, HSBC’s head of EM and global equity strategy, and Pankaj
Grace Adama puts on her earrings in her two-room flat in Abuja before grabbing her handbag and heading to work.
The health NGO worker earns 135,000 naira ($99) a month, nearly twice Nigeria’s minimum wage. Yet she says her income now disappears within days as the cost of housing, electricity and food continues to rise.
“If I’m paid today, my salary stays with me just for one week,” she told Reuters. “If you see the cost of living, house, electricity, everything has gone up.”
Adama’s experience reflects a wider cost-of-living crisis confronting millions of Nigerians as the country approaches elections. Living standards have deteriorated sharply since President Bola Tinubu introduced a series of sweeping economic reforms, including the removal of fuel subsidies, the devaluation of the naira and reductions in electricity subsidies.
Stay ahead of the geopolitical week.
MD Briefing delivers expert analysis across five global fronts — the Indo-Pacific, energy, geoeconomics, European security, and the Middle East — every Monday morning. Free.
The government and investors argue that the reforms were necessary to prevent a deeper fiscal crisis and put Africa’s largest oil producer on a more sustainable economic path.
But for many ordinary Nigerians, the promised benefits have yet to materialise.
The cost of preparing the country’s staple jollof rice has more than doubled since Tinubu took office, according to Lagos-based SBM Intelligence. Petrol prices, meanwhile, have risen roughly sixfold following the removal of subsidies, the weakening of the naira and higher global oil prices.
With elections approaching in January, Tinubu faces the difficult task of convincing voters that the economic pain they have endured will eventually translate into better living standards.
The contrast between economic indicators and everyday life has become increasingly striking.
The World Bank estimates that just over half of Nigeria’s population lived in poverty last year, compared with roughly 42% in 2022.
Some Nigerians have responded to the rising costs by cutting household spending, moving to cheaper accommodation and relying on loans to cover basic expenses.
Adama said she had stopped buying meat regularly, moved to a smaller apartment and was still forced to take short-term loans to pay her bills. She also said she could no longer send money to her elderly mother in Benue state as she had done previously.
“I can’t even send money to my aged mother at home,” she said. “I can’t do a lot of things that I used to do before.”
Yet investors have taken a markedly more positive view of Nigeria’s economic direction.
“This is the most positive investors have been about Nigeria probably in the last two decades,” said Thys Louw, a portfolio manager at Ninety One. “They’re taking the tough medicine now.”
That divergence creates a major political challenge for Tinubu. Financial markets can respond positively to reforms long before their benefits reach households, while voters tend to judge governments according to the immediate cost of food, transport, housing and electricity.
Tinubu has been nicknamed “T-Pain” by some Nigerians frustrated by the rising cost of living.
Tinubu inherited an economy burdened by years of policies that had created significant distortions.
Under former President Muhammadu Buhari, the government maintained petrol subsidies, imposed import restrictions and operated tight currency controls. While those measures were intended to protect consumers and encourage domestic production, they also contributed to shortages, foreign-exchange difficulties and growing pressure on government finances.
Fuel subsidies alone cost the government around $10 billion in 2022.
“We were living in fiscal illusions,” Finance Minister Taiwo Oyedele said at a recent event in Abuja. “We needed to stop deceiving ourselves so the country can move forward.”
Tinubu’s government therefore moved quickly after taking office to dismantle several of those policies.
The removal of fuel subsidies immediately pushed up transportation and living costs. Currency reforms also caused the naira to lose significant value, increasing the cost of imported goods.
The government argues that these measures were unavoidable and that rebuilding the economy requires accepting short-term pain.
There are signs of progress.
Nigeria’s stock market has risen close to 60% this year. Capital inflows reached a six-year high of $23 billion last year, while the opening of the 650,000-barrel-per-day Dangote refinery has created hopes that domestic refining will eventually reduce the country’s dependence on imported petroleum products.
The government has also pointed to increased investment in domestic oil assets as evidence that its reforms are attracting capital.
But those improvements have not necessarily translated into better household finances.
Nigeria’s financial markets have benefited significantly from renewed investor confidence.
However, fewer than 5% of Nigerian adults invest in capital markets, according to the Nigerian stock exchange.
Much of the recent capital inflow has also been concentrated in short-term financial instruments such as Treasury bills, allowing foreign investors to quickly withdraw their money if economic conditions deteriorate.
For ordinary Nigerians, borrowing remains extremely expensive.
The central bank’s key interest rate stands at 26.5% as policymakers attempt to control inflation, which remains close to 16%.
That makes it difficult for businesses to expand and for households to access affordable credit.
At the same time, petrol prices average roughly 1,600 naira ($1.18) per litre nationally. Although that is lower than prices in neighbouring Ghana and Ivory Coast, it remains prohibitively expensive for many Nigerians who had become accustomed to subsidised fuel.
“The solution for me is for government to bring the fuel price down,” said Lagos food seller Eji Uchenna.
She said customers who once purchased food in bulk can no longer afford to do so.
The economic pressure is increasingly becoming a political issue.
In June, federal workers rejected a proposed 100,000-naira minimum wage and threatened an indefinite nationwide strike.
A June voter sentiment tracker by SBM Intelligence found that 80% of Nigerians believed the country was moving in the wrong direction.
Economic hardship is not the only concern. Security, particularly widespread kidnapping, remains a major issue for voters.
Yet widespread dissatisfaction does not necessarily mean Tinubu is vulnerable at the ballot box.
Nigeria’s opposition remains fragmented, reducing the likelihood that dissatisfaction will automatically translate into a coordinated electoral challenge.
“The opposition is disunited, and… the only way the opposition beats Tinubu is if they are united,” said Cheta Nwanze, chief executive of SBM Intelligence.
That gives Tinubu some political space to continue pursuing his economic programme despite the public backlash.
Investors remain optimistic that the reforms will eventually produce stronger economic growth, lower inflation and greater investment.
Louw said that if the government maintains its policies, workers could begin to benefit as inflation falls and interest rates decline.
But the transition remains painful, and the government faces growing pressure to ensure that economic gains are not concentrated among investors and businesses while ordinary households continue to struggle.
The central challenge is therefore no longer simply whether Nigeria’s reforms are economically necessary. It is whether the government can make those reforms politically and socially sustainable.
Tinubu must demonstrate that the sacrifices demanded from Nigerians are producing tangible improvements in their daily lives before voters head to the polls.
Finance Minister Oyedele acknowledged that the government must do more to ensure that economic recovery translates into broader prosperity.
“When inequality persists, it becomes dangerous,” he said. “It’s like sitting on gunpowder; it explodes.”
For Nigeria, the coming election will therefore offer a test not only of Tinubu’s political standing but of whether a painful programme of economic reform can deliver benefits quickly enough for ordinary citizens to believe in it.
With information from Reuters.
Remittances are surviving the new US tax—at least for now.
This article appears in the July/August issue of Global Finance Magazine.
The Dominican Republic isn’t just a tourist paradise; it has a more diversified economy than most Caribbean nations. Yet foreign remittances still reach four in 10 households. Last year, Dominicans abroad sent home a record $11.87 billion, up 10.3% from 2024, according to the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic (BCRD).
For such a country, 2025 was a banner year. But as of January 1, Washington has been levying a 1% tax on remittances paid by cash, money orders, or cashier’s checks under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Trump signed last year.
Related: Country Report: The Dominican Republic Is on the Rebound
While the tax has heightened anxiety in migrant communities, the BCRD forecasts a mild impact on the country, with remittance growth slowing to 3.5% in 2026, or roughly $12.2 billion. Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances and Development Program at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank, broadly agrees, though for reasons rooted less in the tax than in how Dominicans send money.
“My estimate is about 4% growth this year,” Orozco says. “I wouldn’t argue that the slowdown is due to the 1% tax, but rather to the precautionary fear factor.”
Early data supports his analysis. Patricia Krause, economist for Latin America at Coface, a French trade-credit insurance company, says the levy has yet to leave a mark: “Although there was an expectation that it could affect remittance figures, that has not been the case for the Dominican Republic, at least so far. While remittances reached $4.1 billion in the first four months of 2026 — up 4% year over year — the increase was 11% year over year in April,” Krause notes.
According to Orozco’s analysis, remittances across all of Latin America and the Caribbean are projected to grow by 4.7% in 2026, a growth rate that is down from 6.3% the previous year. This indicates that “the slowdown is regional rather than Dominican,” he says.
The reason the tax has landed softly thus far is the taxing mechanism; it applies only to transfers funded with physical cash or paper instruments, not to those paid from a bank account or card, and most Dominicans in the U.S. are able to avoid it.
“More than 80% of Dominicans hold a bank account, and 60% were already sending money digitally before the tax arrived,” Orozco says. “That leaves roughly 40% who send cash, and that cash is not informal.”
Ninety-nine percent of money transfers originate through licensed companies like Western Union, and many of those senders also hold a bank account, he adds: “Instead of using cash, they may just use their debit card and avoid the charges.” At the receiving end of the corridor, cash remains king, with about 70% of transfers still collected as cash, a quarter of them through a home-delivery network Orozco likens to “DoorDash since the ’80s.”
That reflects the makeup of the Dominican diaspora, which is concentrated in the U.S. The fact that the country’s economy is not over-reliant on remittances also helps soften the tax impact. The inflows are worth close to 10% of GDP, Orozco says — 9% in 2024, according to World Bank data — but the country relies on a “much more dynamic” export-manufacturing base than its CAFTA trade partners.
Related: Dominican Republic Tourism Surges
Still, that 1% tax means a lot less cash coming into the country. The loss will total $230.7 million in 2026, according to Helen Dempster, co-director of the Migration and Displacement Program at the Center for Global Development (CGD), a Washington-based think tank. The CGD’s dataset “suggests the Dominican Republic is among the countries most exposed to the U.S. remittance tax,” she added.
However, Orozco’s own survey found that among migrants who send cash, the majority intend to continue doing so and absorb the tax rather than switch. “The impact is on the income of the cash sender,” he says. He ties the levy to the politics of the law that produced it. “It’s part of a broader political agenda aimed at migrant practices the administration deems unacceptable.”
Solly Boussidan is a contributing writer based in Brazil.
Home 
Commentary American Banks Left the Door Open. European Fintechs Are Walking In.
The new battleground for U.S. banking will be about who owns relationships, not who has the biggest balance sheet.
Netflix Inc. co-founder and former CEO Reed Hastings said a few things in 2014 that American banks and fintechs should consider pinning on the breakroom wall or at the top of their main Slack channel.
“We were so obsessed with not being the next Kodak, the next AOL, about not being the company that clung to its roots and missed the big thing.” Hastings recalled: “We said if there’s a bias, we should be more aggressive; we have to be so aggressive it makes our skin crawl.”
Hastings was reflecting on Netflix’s failed 2011 decision to split its DVD and streaming businesses. The move turned him into a temporary laughingstock—one who, as history has made clear, had the last laugh.
It’s hard to imagine the CEO of a major American bank or fintech saying anything like this.
And that’s precisely the problem: While many U.S. banks and fintechs still think like financial institutions, Europe’s most ambitious challengers think like global technology companies.
Global technology companies don’t wait for perfect conditions; they navigate imperfect ones.
That’s the playbook businesses such as Netflix, Uber Technologies Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. followed because international expansion was always part of the plan. These companies didn’t use legal complexity as an excuse for standing still, nor did they stop after achieving success.
Of course, tech isn’t banking. One could argue that the stakes are higher and the consequences of being too aggressive are greater.
But Revolut Group Holdings Ltd. co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky might politely disagree, because that’s exactly what London-based Revolut is doing as it blazes its global trail—politely disagreeing.
Amid exponential growth in Europe, the company has had to deal with different regulations, entrenched incumbents, and cultural barriers across nations—and, in some cases, even regions. For goodness’ sake, Revolut had to make Catalan, not Castilian (Spanish), the default language on its ATMs throughout Spain’s Catalonia region, which includes Barcelona.
The point is clear: The U.S. is hardly the only market where regulation and culture can feel like roadblocks. Fintechs such as Revolut have amassed considerable experience dealing with these obstacles.
As Yorick Naeff, head of innovation at ABN AMRO Bank NV, told me, Europe may talk about a single market, but companies still have “to conquer every market separately again and again.” Tax systems, know-your-customer rules, reporting requirements, consumer behavior, and language all change from country to country—as do the challenges along the way.
In other words, Europe is already a regulatory maze. Fundamentally, the U.S. isn’t a different challenge; it’s just a new one.
Recently, the Financial Times reported that the European Central Bank placed restrictions on Revolut in 2025 to slow down the company’s rapid approval of new products. In April, news broke that Italian authorities fined Revolut €11.5 million ($13.3 million) for “unfair commercial practices.”
Revolut’s response has been a mix of pushback, lip service, and concrete action, such as hiring experienced banking executives who can help the company scale globally while managing complex regulatory environments. None of this has stopped what Storonsky called the company’s “self-guided missiles”—small groups of employees who have the latitude to deploy new products rapidly with minimal corporate oversight.
Revolut has more than 70 million customers worldwide, up from 50 million in November 2024. Across France, Poland, Germany, the U.K., Ireland, Italy, and Spain, nearly one in three new financial accounts is with Revolut. Despite the regulatory friction, Revolut adds about four new Italian customers per minute. In Spain, where traditional banks are thought to have a stronghold, Revolut has more than 6 million accounts for a 13% penetration rate, making it the country’s fourth-largest bank by number of customers.
Revolut enters the U.S. battle-tested, armed with the necessary experience to navigate another complicated regulatory landscape, ready to seize the opportunity American banks and fintechs have left wide open.
To an observer in Europe, one thing is obvious: The U.S. still lacks a company trying to own the entire financial relationship.
Americans still piece together banking, payments, investing, foreign exchange, travel, insurance, and mobile connectivity across multiple platforms. That’s far less the case in Europe and elsewhere around the world.
Revolut, the U.K.’s Monzo Bank Ltd., Germany’s N26 AG, and the Netherlands’ bunq BV all extend well beyond traditional banking. Spain’s Banco Santander SA recently launched an eSIM directly in its app. Swedish buy-now-pay-later pioneer Klarna Bank AB is a fully licensed bank in the E.U. and has applied for its U.S. banking license.
None of these companies see banking as a collection of products. They want to be the primary financial relationship—the place where customers start, not occasionally visit.
Ironically, the closest the U.S. has to this model isn’t a traditional bank at all; it’s Cash App. Block Inc., the parent company of Cash App, deserves enormous credit for recognizing that consumer finance is about more than checking, high APYs, and commission-free stock trades. But as big as it has become, Cash App remains more narrowly focused than the expansive ecosystems emerging across Europe, many with their sights set on the U.S.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon also deserves credit for recognizing that something has changed. When he admitted he was jealous of Revolut’s speed, it didn’t take a linguist to read between the lines.
Sure, Dimon was complimenting a rival—as JPMorgan continues to compete more aggressively on Revolut’s European turf—but it appears he was sending a message to the U.S. banking establishment. By and large, the companies operating like tomorrow’s global consumer platforms aren’t American, and their speed and ambition are something to aspire to.
So why take on America now? As Naeff pointed out, part of the reason “is the size of the market; with even a small percentage market share, you can create an attractive business case.” Just as importantly, these companies believe they can compete not simply on rates or fees, but on experience.
Unless more American banks and fintechs start thinking like global tech companies—such as Netflix, Uber, and Amazon or, in their same sector, like Santander—Europe’s challengers won’t just enter the U.S. market; they’ll redefine what consumers come to expect from the companies they trust with their money.
Rocco Pendola is a U.S.-born journalist based in Spain covering finance, fintech, and investing.
Thames Water paid its finance chief a £1m signing-on fee in July as the company struggles with a mountain of debt and faces temporary nationalisation.
Steve Buck joined the company in April 2025 but it is understood the seven-figure payment was not made until last month after the company had taken legal advice over its contractual obligations.
The existence of the payment, first reported by Sky News,, external was revealed in a letter from the Thames Water chairman to MPs on the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.
In the letter,, external Sir Adrian Montague said he understood customers would see large payments to senior leaders as “unjust” but argued they were necessary to stop staff leaving.
The letter said: “The majority of the team were brought in recently to fix the problems the company faces and are not responsible for causing those problems.
“These talented and experienced individuals have opportunities for roles outside Thames Water and, in many cases, have been actively approached by other companies.
“These roles would be less in the public gaze, less difficult and more remunerative.”
Sir Adrian described the payment to Buck as a “necessary incentive” and said the money had come from emergency funding provided by Thames Water’s lenders.
He said the company is facing recruitment and retention difficulties and warned the problem would “persist” if it was nationalised or put into special administration.
Alistair Carmichael, Lib Dem MP and chair of the Environment Committee, said: “Money should be going into improving services, not remunerating already well-paid senior executives.
“The government were clear in the early days that they wanted this to stop. It is obvious that they have not succeeded in this. We need to hear now from them about what they intend to do about it.”
The utility company owes roughly £20bn and has been working with creditors and government officials to find a way forward.
Failure to reach a deal could lead to Thames Water being forced into a “special administration regime”, a form of temporary nationalisation intended to keep the business operating until a viable solution can be found.
This would see government-appointed officials temporarily running the company – including funding its operations and upgrading infrastructure as well as dealing with any outstanding debts following a restructuring of the business.
If the company was subsequently sold to a private buyer, the government would be able to recoup some taxpayer cash.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has previously said he would like to see “greater public control” of key water and energy utilities.
In the past year, Thames Water boss Chris Weston saw his pay increase 14% to £1.63m while other directors received bonuses totalling £4.1m.
Speaking on the BBC Big Boss interview late last month, Weston acknowledged there was anger about Thames Water pay, but argued that the company needed to be able attract “capable people to help turn this company around”.
“If we’re not prepared to pay market rates, then they won’t come to us and they won’t stay with us,” he said.
Published on
Oil prices rose in early trading on Monday as market participants weighed mixed signals from the US and Iran, with concerns that a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could take longer to materialise.
Futures for international benchmark Brent crude for October delivery gained 1.04% to $84.42 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate futures for September advanced 0.83% to $78.83 a barrel.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards insisted on Sunday that they would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until the US complied with a list of demands.
Tehran insists on retaining control of the waterway – through which a fifth of world oil and LNG pass – after the war and wants to charge tolls for passage, which Washington has pushed back against.
Attacks in the strait, which was free to transit before the war, led to the collapse of an April ceasefire, and mediators have urged both sides to return to the terms of a subsequent June memorandum that set out a path for peace talks.
Iran on Saturday released a list of conditions for reopening the strait, including an end to the war on all fronts, the lifting of a US counterblockade of Iranian ports, the end of sanctions, the release of frozen assets and compensation for wartime damage, the Tasnim news agency reported.
Those conditions echoed the terms of the June agreement, which included a provision to create a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday that their strategy was to maintain their blockade “until the enemy accepts all our conditions… the strait is now actually a theatre of war for us and not just a waterway”.
For his part, US President Donald Trump said in an interview: “We are low-keying it.”
“We are only semi-negotiating with them,” he was quoted as saying. “We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.”
“It will work out,” he added. “It’s like a chess game.”
Additional sources • AFP
Pentagon presses defense contractors to ramp up weapons production
Source link
SA Asks: Should Google's AI leadership changes concern investors?
Source link
ozgurdonmaz/iStock Unreleased via Getty Images
Apple (AAPL) has published a guide for Mac users in mainland China explaining how to connect Alibaba’s (BABA) Qwen artificial intelligence service to the company’s Siri and Writing Tools features.
According to the guidelines that appeared on Saturday in the Mac
Iran says Hormuz deal close amid attack on UAE tanker
Source link
Consumer Staples Earnings Scorecard: Profit holds up despite mixed revenue
Source link
Earnings Call Insights: Nutex Health (NUTX) Q2 2026
“It was an active quarter, marked by strong financial results, important reimbursement developments and continued progress on our growth pipeline” (Chairman of the Board & CEO Thomas Vo).
“On the
Seeking Alpha’s Disclaimer: This article was automatically generated by an AI tool based on content available on the Seeking Alpha website, and has not been curated or reviewed by humans. Due to inherent limitations in using AI-based tools, the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of such articles cannot be guaranteed. This article is intended for informational purposes only. Seeking Alpha does not take account of your objectives or your financial situation and does not offer any personalized investment advice. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank.
Earnings Call Insights: Gladstone Investment (GAIN) Q1 2027
Seeking Alpha’s Disclaimer: This article was automatically generated by an AI tool based on content available on the Seeking Alpha website, and has not been curated or reviewed by humans. Due to inherent limitations in using AI-based tools, the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of such articles cannot be guaranteed. This article is intended for informational purposes only. Seeking Alpha does not take account of your objectives or your financial situation and does not offer any personalized investment advice. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank.
Falling job-growth numbers drive more people to the gig economy to supplement their income.
The preliminary and seasonally adjusted job-growth numbers for July issued by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on August 7, paint a picture of a continuing slowing economy, as the agency reported an overall loss of 23,000 non-farm jobs over the month.
The numbers come on the heels of the Bureau’s revised May and June numbers, which reduced the total number of jobs by 103,000, resulting in 63,000 and 20,000 added jobs, respectively.
“The three-month average payroll gain collapsed by more than a third,” wrote Frances Donal, chief economist at RBC, and Mike Reid, head of US economics at RBC, in an analysis note released before the BLS report. “Net revisions to the prior two months subtracted more jobs than were created in June.”
Financial activities lost 14,000 jobs, with credit intermediation and related activities losing 9,000, while insurance carriers and related activities lost 7,000. The sub-sector for securities, commodity contracts, funds, trusts, other financial vehicles, investments, and related activities added a modest 1,000 jobs over the same period.
Healthcare was a standout in July, adding 22,000 jobs.
Once again, there is little correlation between the employment data issued by the Bureau and that published in the ADP National Employment Report for the month, which is slightly more optimistic.
Using its own methodology developed with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, the authors of the ADP report estimated a gain of 44,000 in U.S. private employment in July, with financial activities gaining 10,000 jobs. Only education and health services beat that gain by adding an estimated 36,000 new jobs. Professional and business services experienced the third-largest gain, adding 9,000 jobs last month.
Findings of the Bank of America Institute’s Employment Report for July, based on anonymized client data, suggest that what job growth occurred in July came from lower-income households, which saw an estimated 2% year-on-year growth, up from 1.7% in June. Higher-income households saw approximately a third of the job growth of lower-income households, while middle-income households saw jobs contract by less than 1%.
The report’s authors noted that the share of fully employed clients active in the gig economy, which has continued to grow over the past three years, is not abating.
The authors conclude that some households are using gig work to “top up” their regular paychecks. In June, nearly half of the gig workers earned income from gig work for only one month in the past 12 months, while 74% of gig workers earned income for three months over the same timeframe.
The gig work that has seen the greatest growth in participation since 2024 is “social commerce,” as thrifting becomes increasingly important to households, the authors write. The number of households seeking to make a little extra via ridesharing, food delivery, content creation, and vacation rentals has returned to close to 2024 levels, with little change.
Rob Daly covers fintech and the economy. Contact him at rdaly@gfmag.com.
nLIGHT (LASR) shares fell about 21% on Friday after the laser technology company warned that China-linked supply chain disruptions would weigh on current-quarter results, overshadowing better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and revenue.
The company reported adjusted earnings of 15 cents per share
Can fintech bridge Colombia’s financial gap? Recent policy shifts and new leadership suggest it can.
This article appears in the July/August issue of Global Finance Magazine.
After several years of subdued growth, weighed down by weak fixed investment, high borrowing costs, persistent productivity constraints, and a complex political environment, Colombia’s next growth story is taking shape, centered on technology, particularly fintech and payments.
But first, the country must reckon with a paradox it has so far failed to resolve.
Over the past decade, Colombia has built one of Latin America’s largest fintech ecosystems, incubating more than 400 active companies. Their combined revenues have tripled over the past four years and are projected to double again by 2027, according to Finnovista’s Fintech Radar Colombia 2025.
Yet the country’s underlying financial system remains shallow. Fewer than one in six microenterprises have access to formal credit. Insurance penetration is just 3.3% of GDP and the financing gap for small and medium-sized enterprises is estimated at 13% of GDP, according to the World Bank.
“For years, we celebrated open accounts while ignoring that millions of people cannot use them to save, pay, or finance their projects without falling into informality,” notes Gabriel Santos, president of Colombia Fintech.
But with the narrow victory in June of right-wing, Trump-backed outsider Abelardo de la Espriella, whose presidential campaign promised deregulation and a more business-friendly stance, Colombia’s industry — and the opportunity for foreign investors — appears to be entering a new era.
“Colombia is selling at a discount to its fundamentals,” says Juan Manuel Quintero, CEO of Precia, a leading provider of valuation services and financial information in Latin America. “For investors willing to look past the headline political noise, the risk-adjusted opportunity is more attractive than the country’s reputation currently suggests.”
At first glance, Colombia appears well-banked. In 2024, 95.8% of Colombian adults held a deposit product, according to Banca de las Oportunidades, and bank-led digital wallets such as Nequi and DaviPlata have driven much of that expansion.
But deposit access and financial depth are not the same thing. Only 35.5% of adults had access to any credit product in 2024, according to the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia. The gap is even wider among businesses; just 15.3% of microenterprises had access to credit, compared with 74.8% of medium-sized enterprises, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Domestic credit to the private sector stands at about 50% of GDP, below the Latin American average of 54% and a fraction of Chile’s 116%, according to the World Bank.
“This is a powerful story of growth,” argues José Ignacio López, president of the National Association of Financial Institutions of Colombia (ANIF). “Colombia is lagging in many regards in terms of financial inclusion compared to peers in the region,” not just in credit but also in insurance and investment products. “The whole agenda of financial inclusion as an engine of growth is there.”
Start-ups are not the only leaders in Colombia’s fintech development; established banks have been among the most aggressive builders. Nequi, created by Bancolombia, and DaviPlata, from Banco Davivienda, highlight how the country’s largest financial institutions were willing to bet early on digital. DaviPlata alone reached 18.5 million customers by the end of 2024.
“The talent, the regulatory openness, the incumbent institutions willing to innovate, and a large, underserved population that represents both a social imperative and a commercial opportunity” are all there, says Quintero. What Colombia lacks is “the institutional architecture to convert those ingredients into compounding, systemic change. That gap is not a market failure; it is a policy choice. And it remains reversible.”
Colombia is building the plumbing to make that possible, and some of it is already functioning.
Bre-B, the country’s interoperable instant-payment system modeled on Brazil’s Pix, went fully live last October. Within months, it had registered 99 million aliases for more than 33 million customers and 2.8 million merchants.
Cash still accounts for 77.8% of transactions in Colombia, but Bre-B aims to change that by allowing anyone to send and receive money instantly across any bank, wallet, or fintech, using nothing more than a phone number or national ID.
Decree 368 of 2026, handed down in April by the outgoing administration of President Gustavo Petro, added a second layer, making open finance mandatory for supervised institutions and replacing an earlier voluntary framework that had seen limited adoption. Its significance goes beyond convenience. Most of Colombia’s small businesses have no credit history, operate on cash, and lack collateral or audited accounts. The formal credit system was not built to serve them.
But a business that processes payments through Bre-B immediately starts producing something it never did before: a timestamped, verifiable record of money moving in and out. Quintero calls it simply the “credit file” for businesses that have never had one. If open-finance rules allow lenders to access that data, the underwriting equation shifts from asking whether a borrower has the right documents to asking whether it generates enough cash to repay a loan.
The deeper opportunity, López argues, lies in open data: extending the logic to commercial records, utility payments, and supply-chain relationships that fall entirely outside formal finance. “The ultimate goal is to roll out open finance and then move on to open data. That combination of payments and open data could be a powerful tool,” he says.
When he takes office in August, De la Espriella’s government will inherit a fintech sector with solid private-sector momentum, but one that is still short on tax clarity, regulatory continuity, capital formation, data governance, and trust.
His win prompted an immediate rally in Colombian bonds and equities as investors priced in a more business-friendly policy environment. But the harder question remains: whether that agenda can reduce the structural frictions that keep isolated success stories from evolving into deeper financial infrastructure.
The fiscal framework is central to the problem. Early-stage companies face tax obligations disproportionate to their cash generation, while the treatment of reinvested capital, equity incentives, and technology investment does not reflect how digital businesses actually scale.
“A fiscal architecture not designed for innovation-stage businesses creates disproportionate burdens at exactly the moment when companies need to reinvest capital to scale,” Quintero notes.
López anticipates continuity despite political polarization. Financial inclusion and fintech are “not really controversial” areas, he says, even in a politically divided country. But investors still need “clear signals, especially long-term ones, so fintech firms and the broader financial sector can put their bets on the country.”
Financial inclusion alone will not solve Colombia’s growth problem. But if the country can turn payment data into access to credit and fintech momentum into deeper financial markets, it could show that parts of the informal economy can become more visible, financeable, and productive.
Thomas Monteiro is a contributing writer based in Spain.
Earnings Call Insights: INmune Bio (INMB) Q2 2026
Seeking Alpha’s Disclaimer: This article was automatically generated by an AI tool based on content available on the Seeking Alpha website, and has not been curated or reviewed by humans. Due to inherent limitations in using AI-based tools, the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of such articles cannot be guaranteed. This article is intended for informational purposes only. Seeking Alpha does not take account of your objectives or your financial situation and does not offer any personalized investment advice. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank.
MDA Space Non-GAAP EPS of $0.36 beats by $0.10, revenue of $498.6M beats by $180.04M
Source link
Nxera Pharma GAAP EPS of ¥15.86, revenue of ¥18.91B; reaffirms FY 2026 outlook
Source link