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The Mortgage Bankers’ Association compiles various mortgage loan indexes. The purchase applications index measures applications at mortgage lenders.
The flash Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index, or PMI, provides an early estimate of current private
The U.S. regulator floats expanded investor access and simplified financial disclosures.
This article appears in the October issue of Global Finance Magazine.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering a new route for raising capital that does not involve issuing equity or debt, but instead uses crypto assets. In August, the regulator released the aptly named Regulation Crypto Assets (Reg CA) for comment.
The regulation, as initially written, would permit companies to raise up to $5 million over a four-year period or up to $75 million in each 12-month period. To raise the higher amount, the issuer would need to provide financial statements and comply with federal securities law’s anti-fraud and anti-manipulation provisions.
The new rule differs notably from alternative capital-raising methods under Regulation Crowdfunding, Regulation A, and Regulation D, which let issuers raise a maximum of $5 million, $75 million, and an unlimited amount of funds, respectively.
Reg CA, as proposed, would allow issuers to provide potential investors with principles-based financial disclosures, giving issuers the flexibility to select which financial information to disclose rather than following a prescriptive list of required information, with the intention that issuers focus on the substance of the information provided.
Secondly, the proposed rule does not include investment limitations for non-accredited investors, those who do not have a net worth of more than $1 million excluding their primary residence. Regulation Crowdfunding and Regulation A each cap the amount non-accredited investors can invest. For Regulation Crowdfunding, the maximum is $107,000 across all offerings in a 12-month period; if the investor’s net worth is less than $124,000, the limit is the greater of $2,500 or 5% of their net worth.
Regulation A limits non-accredited investors to 10% of their net worth for issuance of Tier 2 offerings (up to $75 million) but has no investment cap for Tier 1 offerings (up to $20 million).
Regulation D, however, permits the issuance of private securities in any amount, but only issuances of $10 million or less are available to a maximum of 35 non-accredited investors.
The proposal also includes a safe harbor for investment contracts issued under the rule if the issuer permanently ceases or promises to cease all essential managerial efforts it represented or promised it would under cover of the investment contract and makes a public filing that it satisfied those conditions with analysis that supports the claim. If met, the SEC would deem that the crypto asset subject to the investment contract would not be considered an investment contract with regard to the statutory definition of a security.
Reg CA’s comment period ends Oct. 20, when the SEC will review the comments before possibly revising and finalizing the rule and entering it into the Federal Register for enactment.
Early comments on Reg CA do not reject the 400-page proposed rule, but strongly stress addressing perceived design flaws.
The suggested disclosure exemption concentrates a great deal of risk, noted Tilden Moschetti, an attorney with Moschetti Syndication Law.
“None of the proposed safeguards carries the weight the release assigns to it,” he commented. “Principles-based disclosure does not verify anything. Antifraud liability arrives after the money is gone. A $5 million issuer cap says nothing about what one household can lose. And the prospect that some projects will generate useful network effects is not a reason to hand unsophisticated investors uncapped development risk.”
Neil Osanto, founder of the Persistence Analytics Group, suggested that the SEC could strengthen its framework with a narrow distinction in his comment letter. “Disclosure of a claimed condition is not the same as evidence that the condition has been achieved,” he wrote. “Where a material representation affects investor understanding or carries a regulatory consequence, the evidentiary standard should follow the consequence.”
The crypto industry should consider the federal securities law exemption a gift from the SEC, despite numerous courts concluding that crypto companies should be subject to those laws when the SEC, under Chair Gary Gensler, was suing them, Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy at public advocacy firm Better Markets, told Global Finance.
“So this is just, as I said, kind of a gift to crypto,” he added. “I think that tells you everything that you need to know. You have the crypto industry getting everything it wants from the SEC, and this is just another example of that.”
Rob Daly covers economics and policy. Contact him at rdaly@gfmag.com.
A day after unveiling Pontes, its system for settling tokenised assets in central bank money, the ECB has set out how it wants Europe’s crypto rulebook rewritten.
The response, published on Tuesday by the European System of Central Banks, which groups the ECB with the EU’s national central banks, argues for tougher rules on stablecoins, staking and crypto firms.
It feeds into the European Commission’s review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, known as MiCA, the EU’s rulebook for cryptocurrencies and the firms that trade them.
MiCA has applied since December 2024, and the last transitional deadline for existing operators expired on 1 July, including Binance, the world’s largest exchange, to stop serving European customers.
The Commission’s consultation will close on 30 September, a month later than planned.
The central banks’ recommendations are not binding, and the Commission will weigh them alongside other responses before deciding whether to reopen the law.
EU diplomats have told Euronews they expect a revision in 2027, which would need the approval of the European Parliament and member states.
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to hold a steady value, usually by tracking the US dollar.
MiCA already bars both issuers and crypto exchanges from paying interest on them, and the central banks want it kept that way.
“The payment of stablecoin remuneration should continue to be prohibited,” the ECB response says.
Their targets are the workarounds. Some exchanges, the response notes, offer crypto lending, borrowing and staking, “thereby replicating the economic effect of interest payments through ancillary or unregulated services.”
The central banks want the ban extended to those activities and to indirect rewards, such as certain loyalty-programme benefits, calling it “a clear legislative priority”.
Washington has gone the other way.
The 2025 GENIUS Act banned US stablecoin issuers from paying interest but left exchanges free to offer rewards, and whether to close that gap became one of the most contested fights over the CLARITY Act, the landmark crypto bill that fell ten votes short in the US Senate on 15 September.
The central banks want stronger tools against tokens pegged to foreign currencies.
It would be useful, they say, if authorities could impose “a prohibition to issue new tokens, as well as an obligation to redeem existing tokens” on issuers where central banks judge that the tokens pose a threat, including to financial stability.
More broadly, they see limited benefit in stablecoins for everyday payments at home, given instant bank transfers and the planned digital euro. They warn that MiCA provides no legal basis for issuing the same stablecoin both inside and outside the EU.
In a bank run, European reserves could end up paying holders elsewhere, while “EU authorities cannot determine with certainty how many tokens are held within the Union.”
Eurozone central banks also do not currently let stablecoin issuers hold customer funds with them.
A token fully backed by central bank money, the response warns, “would effectively result in a ‘synthetic’ central bank digital currency” that is essentially a private imitation of the digital euro and could, in theory, drain deposits from commercial banks, especially under stress.
On staking, where users lock up crypto in exchange for rewards, the response is blunt: “Staking, lending and borrowing of crypto-assets should be regulated at Union level.”
Where a firm takes customers’ crypto and promises to return it, potentially with a premium, the central banks argue that the arrangement can be “comparable to the taking of repayable funds”, in the language of banking.
The same applies to decentralised finance, or DeFi, where lending and trading run on automated software rather than through a company.
MiCA exempts fully decentralised services but never defines the term, and the central banks cite studies showing that full decentralisation is rarely, if ever, achieved, leaving it unclear who is in control.
The central banks also back a Commission proposal to move licensing and supervision of crypto firms from national regulators to ESMA, the EU’s markets watchdog.
Currently, one national licence covers the whole bloc, which was the route Binance originally pursued in Greece.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week, citing people familiar with the discussions, that ECB President Christine Lagarde urged Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis not to approve Binance’s application because of the exchange’s past compliance problems and fears that its scale could deepen the use of US dollar stablecoins in Europe.
A senior Greek regulator, according to the newspaper, told the exchange that Lagarde wanted the decision delayed until ESMA took over, the same shift the central banks endorse in Tuesday’s response. Binance withdrew the application on 24 June.
Neither the ECB nor the Greek regulator has confirmed the account. The ECB, which has no formal role in licensing crypto firms, declined to comment, while Binance said it would “not comment on speculation”.
Palo Alto Networks equips OpenAI, Anthropic frontier models into AI defense products
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The European Commission struck a trade agreement with the Philippines on Tuesday, stepping up its diversification strategy across the Indo-Pacific region.
The deal comes more than a year after the US introduced sweeping new tariffs on many of its trading partners, prompting retaliatory measures and adding to global trade tensions.
Since then, the EU has been seeking new trade ties, recently concluding major deals with India, Australia and Indonesia.
“This agreement sends a clear signal that the EU is reinforcing its engagement with the Indo-Pacific,” EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič said on Tuesday.
“Half of global consumers are covered by European Free trade agreements. Nobody else has this advantage.”
The new agreement will give EU businesses access to a market of 113 million people, and remove over 94% of customs duties. It will cover more than 97% of bilateral trade, including EU exports of machinery, medicines and medical appliances, as well as agri-products such as meat, pork, poultry and spirits.
Exports from the Philippines are dominated by semiconductors, integrated circuits and industrial machinery.
The deal should also facilitate EU investment in raw materials in the Philippines, as the EU seeks to move away from China, which holds a monopoly on key raw materials.
Bilateral trade in goods between the EU and the Philippines was €17.6 billion in 2025, while trade in services reached €10.3 billion in 2024. The stock of EU foreign direct investment in the Philippines amounted to €15.4 billion.
Šefčovič also said there was a “mutual interest” with countries in the wider Indo-Pacific area “to address the current global turbulence” and “the squeeze on the supply chains.”
Brussels says China has weaponised critical products for EU industry such as chips and rare earths in 2025, jeopardising whole sectors such as the car industry.
The Commissioner added that trade deals with Thailand and Malaysia were next on the EU agenda, with an agreement with Bangkok foreseen by the end of the year.
The Gulf war is bringing Syria back onto the MENA business map.
Syria’s coast is gaining new strategic importance as investors look to build trade routes linking Gulf countries and Iraq to North Africa and the rest of the Mediterranean, and to avoid the Strait of Hormuz.
Traffic at Syrian ports has increased at least 25% since March 2026. According to recent data from Syria’s General Authority for Borders and Customs, 945 ships carrying 8 million tons of cargo have passed through the country’s ports in the first half of 2026.
In Tartus, Dubai-based logistics giant DP World has invested $800 million in a 30-year concession to develop and operate port facilities. Three harbor cranes delivered this summer are expected to boost cargo-handling capacity by 40% and allow larger vessels to dock.
“By investing in world-class infrastructure, technology and our people, we are creating a modern gateway that will strengthen supply chains, attract new trade opportunities and contribute to the country’s long-term economic recovery,” said Fahad al-Banna, CEO of DP World Tartus, in a press conference.
Further north, French shipping and logistics major CMA-CGM – whose founding Saadé family has roots on the Syrian coast – secured a similar $265 million contract to modernize and run maritime infrastructure in Latakia. In May, the group also signed to operate dry ports near Damascus and Aleppo, strengthening road and rail connections between Syria’s two largest cities and maritime hubs.
New infrastructure is emerging to knit Syria’s coast into the wider region including airport renovations, pipelines, and data cables. In August, U.S. firm UNIFI signed a deal for 149-mile submarine cable connecting Cyprus and Tartous, helping data flow from the Gulf to Europe.
The projects are part of wider billion-dollar investment pledges across Syria, following the fall of former president Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the end of the 14-year civil war.
“The coast is shifting from a military geography to a commercial one” comments Benjamin Feve, senior consultant at Karam Shaar Advisory Limited. “Tartus was once the Russian naval foothold; today, it is a concession operated by global port operators”. In August, Moscow agreed to return all civilian infrastructure to the Syrian state and said its military bases will be turned into joint training centers.
Since he seized power in December 2024, President Ahmad al-Charaa has secured broad international support, notably from U.S. President Donald Trump who called him a “real leader.” Late August, Washington removed Syria from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, the latest in a series of measures unwinding decades of sanctions on Damascus.
On the ground, Gulf states are the biggest backers of Syrian reconstruction with billions of announced investments, but few projects have yet materialized, and many in Syria fear the momentum could slip away.
“High oil prices give Riyadh and Abu Dhabi greater budget flexibility, which is certainly an opportunity for Syria, but not necessarily a fundamental shift,” said Feve. “Gulf capitals are buying an option on Syria’s geography, but trade volumes are only about one-fifth of pre-2011 levels. So, while new activity is real, it remains weak and once the war is over, maybe the Strait of Hormuz will regain its role as a key transit route, and GCC countries will look away from Syria again”
Despite appearances of restored peace, the Syrian coast remains a tricky place to do business. In 2025, deadly clashes between the new government and allies of Assad killed nearly 1,500 people.
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US chipmaker AMD has become the latest company to join the $1 trillion (€850bn) valuation club, as investors pile into stocks benefiting from the massive investment boom in artificial intelligence.
At around 5:10 p.m. CEST on Monday, AMD shares were up 9.4% at $612 (€520), extending a surge that has added some $200 billion (€170bn) in valuation to the semiconductor company in a week.
The California-based group, which has announced ventures with both OpenAI and Anthropic, notched a 50% jump in second-quarter revenues over the year-ago level to $11.5 billion (€9.8bn), thanks to a more than doubling of data centre revenue.
In releasing results in early August, AMD said it expects data centre sales to accelerate in the second half of 2026.
Even with the latest surge, AMD’s valuation significantly trails rival chip company Nvidia, considered the pace-setter in artificial intelligence.
Nvidia’s valuation currently approaches $5.5 trillion (€4.7trn).
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Jeld-Wen Holding (JELD) and its creditors are discussing a debt transaction that could extend upcoming maturities, raise new capital and give some unsecured bondholders a stronger position in the company’s capital structure.
Under the proposal, holders of Jeld-Wen’s first-lien loan due
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SpaceXAI (SPCX) released its latest frontier model, Grok 4.7, on Monday, which the Elon Musk-led company said is its most capable yet for coding and knowledge work.
At the same time, input and output token prices remain at $2 per million and $6
The European Union and Canada last week unveiled plans for an ambitious new partnership that could eventually give Canada a form of associate EU membership. Yet their existing landmark agreement remains unfinished business.
The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) was signed in 2016 and has applied provisionally since 2017, removing almost all tariffs and helping drive a sharp increase in transatlantic trade. But ten EU countries – Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Slovenia – have still not ratified it.
The contrast was underlined last week when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen invited Canada to deepen its economic and security ties with the bloc.
“We will move from CETA to an Alliance for the Future to create a common prosperity and economic security space,” von der Leyen told MEPs and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Strasbourg.
Despite not being fully ratified, the deal provisionally entered into force in 2017.
But what is CETA and why is its ratification blocked?
CETA was concluded in 2016 after seven years of negotiations and often heated debate across EU member states.
The agreement removed tariffs on 98% of goods traded between the EU and Canada, covering products ranging from wine and cars to chemicals. It also opened up more of the Canadian market to European companies in sectors including financial services, telecommunications and transport.
The Commission says the agreement boosted EU-Canada bilateral trade in goods and services by 80% in 2025 compared to 2016, when CETA was signed, reaching €130 billion, up from €72.1 billion recorded nine years before. The EU has a trade surplus of €16 billion in goods and €9,7 billion in services.
For agricultural products, it allows 143 European products with the status of geographical indications (GIs) to be sold in Canada, protecting them from imitation. The deal also includes quotas for EU cheese exported to Canada (32,000 tonnes per year), Canadian beef (50,000 tonnes) and pork (80,000 tonnes) to the EU. It also bans imports of Canadian products containing prohibited substances, such as growth hormones.
Only 3% of the beef quotas were filled between 2021 and 2023, due to the EU’s Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) rules, which make it costly for Canadian beef producers to export, according to a Commission assessment.
Concerns over food safety and environmental standards are among the reasons CETA has faced resistance in EU countries. European farmers have also raised concerns about unfair competition from Canadian products, arguing that some of Canada’s production rules are less stringent than those in the EU.
CETA opponents also criticised the deal’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions. Those let companies bring a claim against the state before an arbitration tribunal if its government adopts a law that discriminates against a company and harms its profits. The tribunals were ad hoc, composed of private arbitrators.
However, controversies around a system that might favour business lobbies led the Commission to include safeguards and replace the Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism with an Investment Court System with permanent judges and an appeal mechanism. The EU and Canada have also introduced provisions to safeguard their right to regulate policies aiming to protect public health and safety, the environment or social protection. But opponents say that the safeguards won’t be enough to protect such policies. It is planned that the courts will only come into force once the deal is ratified by all 27 member states.
There is no clear timetable, not least because the ratification process is effectively blocked in several member states.
For instance, in France, the Senate rejected the deal in 2024, and the government then blocked its submission to the National Assembly, fearing a full rejection.
In Poland, the ratification process is also frozen, as well as in Italy, where it has been blocked since the government rejected it in 2018, considering Italian GIs were not given enough protection. Italian MEP Carlo Fidanza, from the Brothers of Italy party, recently said that there were few chances the deal would be submitted to parliament before the December 2027 elections.
Europe’s central banks now have a working bridge into tokenised markets.
Launched on Monday, Pontes lets wholesale transactions in tokenised assets, meaning stocks, bonds and other instruments recorded as digital tokens on distributed ledgers, to settle in the safest form of money available — reserves held at the central bank itself.
It matters because the absence of a risk-free settlement asset has been one of the main barriers holding blockchain technology back. Without it, tokenised trades have typically settled in commercial bank money or stablecoins, carrying credit risk that large institutions are reluctant to accept.
“The Eurosystem is working to enable a more integrated, innovative and resilient European financial market in the digital age,” said ECB President Christine Lagarde.
Thirteen institutions have completed onboarding and are ready to use the system immediately, including Deutsche Bank, Santander, Société Générale, KfW and the European Investment Bank, alongside four ledger operators including Clearstream.
The ECB also intends to become a user itself.
In a separate announcement, it said it has begun preparatory work to invest a small portion of its own funds in tokenised securities, with purchases settled through Pontes.
The initial focus will be euro-denominated debt issued by euro area governments, regional authorities, agencies and European supranational institutions.
The own-funds portfolio sits outside monetary policy and generates income to cover the bank’s running costs. No amount was specified, and the Executive Board will decide on timing once the groundwork is done.
“Pontes brings tokenised markets another step closer to the core of the euro area’s financial infrastructure,” said Richard Baker, founder and CEO of Tokenovate, which builds technology to help financial institutions automate post-trade processing, collateral management and tokenised settlement.
Baker noted the service will initially run within existing market hours, but that “the longer-term opportunity is to support more continuous, potentially 24/7, settlement.”
That gap is where Europe is playing catch-up.
American markets have moved faster as the New York Stock Exchange is building a blockchain-based venue for trading tokenised shares and funds around the clock, and BlackRock has run a tokenised money market fund since 2024.
Pontes itself will only reach full capability, with longer operating hours and enhanced features, by 2028.
The two sides are also taking different routes.
Washington, under US President Donald Trump, abandoned plans for a Federal Reserve digital currency and backed privately issued stablecoins instead. On the other hand, Frankfurt is betting that public central bank money should sit at the centre.
Pontes is aimed at banks and markets, not consumers. The retail equivalent, the digital euro, would let the public make everyday payments directly in central bank money.
That project is further from reality.
The European Parliament’s economic committee approved its position in June, opening negotiations with member states, and final legislation is targeted for the end of this year.
If that holds, a pilot involving 36 payment providers will begin in September 2027, with first issuance possible in 2029.
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Volkswagen, Europe’s largest automaker, is no longer among the eurozone’s blue chips.
Index provider Stoxx confirmed the change in its annual review at the start of September, and it came into force before trading began on Monday, with Finnish telecoms group Nokia returning to the index and French utility Engie joining.
Dutch information-services group Wolters Kluwer was also dropped.
The removal is mechanical rather than a judgement, as the index is weighted by free-float market value, and Volkswagen’s shrinking valuation no longer cleared the threshold.
However, the consequences are real, as funds that track the benchmark must now sell their Volkswagen holdings, adding to pressure on a stock already under strain. Stellantis suffered the same fate last year.
Volkswagen shares have fallen almost 30% since the start of the year and are down over 6% since last Monday’s open, trading at roughly €76 at the time of writing.
The timing could hardly have been worse.
On Friday, Volkswagen flagged around €10 billion in one-off charges and cut its operating margin forecast for 2026 to no more than 1%, down from a previous range of 4% to 5.5%. Analysts had expected 4.1%.
More than €6 billion of the charges stem from a writedown at Porsche, in which Volkswagen holds a 75.4% stake, after the sports car maker lowered its medium-term expectations.
Porsche has been hit hard by American tariffs and weak Chinese demand for foreign luxury brands, and managed a margin of just 1.1% last year.
A further €2 billion or more covers expanded early retirement schemes, impairments in China and the planned sale of Volkswagen Osnabrück GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary and automotive manufacturing plant located in the northwest German city of Osnabrück.
The company warned of “further deterioration in the market environment, especially in China, as well as an accelerated shift in demand in favour of battery-electric vehicles.”
The warning came two weeks after it agreed its largest-ever restructuring, doubling planned job cuts to 100,000 and halving its model line-up.
However, not everyone reads the numbers as a collapse.
Stripping out the one-off items, Volkswagen puts its underlying margin at around 4%, and it kept its cash flow and liquidity forecasts unchanged.
Deutsche Bank, which rates the shares a buy with a €115 price target, said it believes “the headline significantly overstates the deterioration in the underlying business.”
The bank does not expect the pain to end there as it wrote that “additional restructuring charges simply confirm that the transformation process is very expensive and complex […] we expect more to follow over the coming months.”
Volkswagen’s third-quarter results are due on 29 October.
