Live news updates from April 11: IMF lowers growth outlook, Sweden’s top pension fund fires chief on banking losses

Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney behind the criminal indictment of Donald Trump, has sued Republican Jim Jordan in an attempt to quash attempts to compel current and former New York prosecutors to provide evidence to the House judiciary committee.

In a lawsuit filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, Bragg said his office had been the subject of an “unprecedentedly brazen and unconstitutional attack”, by Jordan and the committee he chairs, accusing the Ohio Republican of creating a “retaliatory political circus designed to undermine the rule of law”.

Read more about the lawsuit here

US President Joe Biden arrived in Belfast on Tuesday night to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement peace deal and look ahead to the future.

Biden spent several minutes chatting with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on the Tarmac, before travelling to his Belfast hotel.

The US president will hold bilateral talks with Sunak on Wednesday morning before he delivers a speech at Ulster university and greets local politicians and business leaders.

He will then head across the border for a longer visit to Ireland, from where both of his great-great grandfathers emigrated during the famine in the 1840s.

HSBC has hired more than 40 investment bankers who used to work at Silicon Valley Bank, the latest move by the British lender to scoop up parts of the failed tech-focused bank.

A month after HSBC acquired SVB’s UK subsidiary for £1, the bank is now hiring several dozen of its US bankers from First Citizens, which bought much of SVB in an auction handled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The group of ex-SVB bankers will establish a new banking practice catering to tech and healthcare companies as well as venture capital funds, HSBC said in a statement on Tuesday.

Michael Jordan’s signed pair of Air Jordan trainers sold for a record $2.2mn in an online auction on Tuesday, becoming the most valuable trainers ever sold.

Sotheby’s auctioned the basketball star’s 1998 NBA Finals Game 2 Air Jordan 13s from his final season with the Chicago Bulls in 1997 and 1998, where he led his team to its sixth NBA championship.

Jordan sports memorabilia has remained a hot commodity despite his retirement from the sport two decades ago. His jersey from his final season playing for the Chicago Bulls fetched $10.1mn in September.

Share moves to note on the New York Stock Exchange include CarMax, Weight Watchers International and Moderna:

• Shares in used-car dealer CarMax rose 10.69 per cent to $72.90 a share in afternoon trading on Tuesday, after the company reported higher profit than expected in its latest quarter, despite weak demand for used cars.

• Weight Watchers International shares jumped 48 per cent in afternoon trading on Tuesday to $6.13 per share, after a Goldman Sachs analyst upgraded the stock because of its acquisition of a telehealth provider that will give the company access to weight loss drugs.

• Shares in Moderna recovered after plunging 8 per cent in pre-market trading but were still down 3.9 per cent to $153.90 on Tuesday afternoon, after the biotech company said a late-stage study of its influenza vaccine candidate failed to determine its efficacy.

Meta has launched its long-awaited feature to allow users to send money to businesses via messaging app WhatsApp in Brazil.

The Brazilian feature is a test bed as Meta seeks to facilitate more business messaging and ecommerce on its platforms globally, as the economic downturn hurts its advertising business.

WhatsApp had aimed to launch a merchant payments function in Brazil in late 2021, but it struggled to sign up local companies that process electronic payments and to win regulatory approvals.

After Brazil’s central bank finally gave the plan the green light last month, the social media group announced it would roll out the payments tool to a small number of businesses before making it available to others.

A top Federal Reserve official signalled he is open to another interest rate increase, suggesting the US central bank may not yet be done squeezing the economy in an effort to stamp out high inflation.

John Williams, president of the New York Fed and a voting member on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, said another quarter-point rate rise was a “reasonable starting point”, but that the final decision would depend on the incoming economic data.

What could alter the path forward, however, is a more substantive pullback in lending activity in the aftermath of the recent US banking turmoil that erupted in March.

He added: “One thing that we’re paying attention to is credit conditions but also do we really see signs of this underlying inflation coming down?”

The UK Treasury has appointed Megan Greene to succeed Silvana Tenreyro on the Bank of England’s rate-setting monetary policy committee.

Greene, who is global chief economist at Kroll and a contributing editor at the Financial Times, will begin her three-year term as an external committee member on July 5, the Bank of England said in a statement on Tuesday.

BoE governor Andrew Bailey said Greene brought “significant experience from her work across financial services and academia” to the role.

The rate-setting committee comprises four independent external members who are appointed by the chancellor in an attempt to bring diversity of thinking and expertise to monetary policy.

Italy is debating a draft law that seeks to attract businesses to list on the Milan stock exchange by streamlining requirements and aligning voting rights with other European bourses.

The measures are expected to be approved at a cabinet meeting in Rome on Tuesday.

Companies planning to list in Milan will be able to issue multi-vote shares, an option that was limited in Italy and that prompted businesses such as Mediaset and Exor to leave.

Investors will gain the right to cast up to 10 votes a share, which would overcome a three-votes rule.

Business owners said the old rule made them lose control of their companies.

Russia has toughened laws on conscription to the armed forces, making it more difficult for Russian men to dodge the draft.

Previously, conscription notices had to be handed in person to the prospective draftee. The changes introduced on Tuesday enable call-up notices to be delivered digitally via a government portal that Russian citizens use for everything from registering coronavirus vaccines to applying for new passports.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the legislative changes are aimed at improvement of the military registration system and “have nothing to do with mobilisation”.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s cabinet on Tuesday approved new rules on conscription, allowing recruitment centres to send summonses to eligible draftees regardless of their location in the country. Previously, they could only be handed to conscripts at their registered address.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s efforts to revitalise the UK economy have not been sufficient to raise it from the foot of the global league table this year, according to forecasts published by the IMF on Tuesday.

In its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook, the fund predicted the UK economy would shrink by 0.3 per cent in 2023 — even after a significant upgrade to the forecast of a contraction of 0.6 per cent in January.

The result would mean Hunt would miss his two main fiscal rules — to have both a falling public debt burden and borrowing below 3 per cent of gross domestic product by 2028.

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The IMF has warned of a “hard landing” for the global economy if persistently troublesome inflation keeps interest rates higher for longer and amplifies financial risks.

Although the fund left its overall economic forecasts largely unchanged from January in its latest World Economic Outlook, published on Tuesday, it stressed that signs of resilience alongside lower global energy and food prices masked a darker reality.

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s chief economist, said: “Below the surface . . . turbulence is building, and the situation is quite fragile.”

“Risks to the outlook are heavily skewed to the downside, with the chances of a hard landing having risen sharply,” the IMF said in its twice-yearly full forecasts published on Tuesday.

Read more about the IMF’s forecasts here

Police in Northern Ireland’s second-largest city Londonderry, also known as Derry, said on Tuesday they were investigating a suspicious device left in a cemetery after an Easter Monday parade by dissident republicans.

The bomb scare, on the day US president Joe Biden flies into Belfast to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement peace deal, came after police last week warned of potential violence.

“This suspicious device is located in the same area where participants in yesterday’s un-notified Easter parade took cover under umbrellas and removed the paramilitary-style clothing they wore, and burnt them,” said Nigel Goddard, Derry City and Strabane area commander chief superintendent.

On Monday, masked teenagers threw petrol bombs at a police van but there was no other violence.

Moderna shares declined after the company disclosed that a late-stage study of its influenza vaccine candidate had failed to gather enough data to determine the jab’s efficacy.

The US drug company said it had developed an update to its experimental flu vaccine called mRNA-1010 and announced plans to initiate a confirmatory phase 3 trial this month.

Moderna shares fell as much as 8 per cent in pre-market trading on Tuesday as investors considered the likelihood of a delay to the launch of a flu vaccine, which is one of a handful of products the company is relying on to drive sales this decade.

The company faces a drop in revenue this year as sales of the Covid-19 vaccine Spikevax, its only approved product, are contracted at $5bn in 2023, from $18.4bn in 2022.

Moderna forecast its respiratory vaccines will generate sales in the range of $8bn to $15bn in 2027.

Glencore has added a cash sweetener to its hostile takeover bid for Teck Resources as the miner ramps up pressure on its Canadian rival’s shareholders to accept a deal.

The FTSE 100 mining group has offered to pay a cash element that could amount to $8.2bn to buy Teck shareholders out of their stake in a coal-focused spin-off, said the revised proposal, which still values the deal at almost $23bn.

The plan grants investors a 24 per cent stake in a specially created separate industrial metals business.

The latest offer comes a day after Teck chief executive Jonathan Price told the Financial Times the deal was a “non-starter”.

GCHQ has appointed as its director Anne Keast-Butler, who will become the first woman to lead Britain’s communications and cyber intelligence spy agency.

The deputy director of MI5, the UK’s domestic intelligence agency, will take up the role at GCHQ in May.

She succeeds Sir Jeremy Fleming, who in January announced his decision to step down after six years leading GCHQ.

Keast-Butler “has the vision to take GCHQ into the future and will ensure that it continues its vital work to protect the UK”, national security adviser Sir Tim Barrow said in a statement on Tuesday.

European stocks advanced at the opening on Tuesday, as investors took heart from a late rally on Wall Street and looked towards further possible interest rate rises on both sides of the Atlantic.

The region-wide Stoxx 600 rose 0.5 per cent, while Germany’s Dax and France’s Cac 40 were up 0.5 per cent and 0.7 per cent, respectively. London’s FTSE 100 climbed 0.4 per cent. Markets had been closed since Friday for the Easter holiday.

The gains followed promising data from the US on Friday, which showed the number of jobs added to the economy fell in March to 236,000. However, investors said the decline was probably not significant enough to deter the Fed from raising rates again.

Read more from the Markets Briefing here

Moderna: The biotech company will hold its fourth annual vaccines day, where investors will learn how the company is navigating weakening demand for its Covid-19 vaccines.

Fedspeak: Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee is speaking at the Economic Club of Chicago Forum. Philadelphia Fed president Patrick Harker and Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari are also scheduled to speak today.

Biden: US President Joe Biden will arrive in Belfast, Northern Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

IMF: The multilateral agency will release its World Economic Outlook and Global Financial Stability reports today at its annual spring meeting.

Big share moves on the European stock exchanges include container and logistics company AP-Moller Maersk, meal-kit delivery business HelloFresh and German travel company Tui:

• AP Møller-Maersk shares rose 4.5 per cent on Tuesday after HSBC cut its target price for the Danish logistics company to DKK 16,900 ($2,475) from DKK 22,100 on Monday. The conglomerate announced last week that it planned to expand its network of warehouses across the UK.

• Shares in German meal-kit company HelloFresh climbed 4 per cent in early trading after JPMorgan moved from an underweight to overweight position, citing the company’s introduction of ready-to-eat offerings as a “promising” move.

• Shares in Tui slipped 5.6 per cent after Morgan Stanley cut the German travel company’s target share price to €8.5, from €15. Broker Citi said the company’s share price performance, which since March has fallen by almost one-third, “to some extent highlights the limited institutional investor interest”.

The director general of the CBI Tony Danker has been sacked with immediate effect following an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace.

He will be replaced by Rain Newton-Smith, the organisation’s former chief economist, who will return as the director-general after a brief spell as a managing director for policy at Barclays.

The dismissal of Danker followed an investigation by the law firm Fox Williams which has rocked the business organisation and spawned further allegations that do not relate to Danker.

Three other CBI employees have been suspended pending further investigation into a number of allegations, the CBI confirmed.

The CBI said the allegations in recent weeks had been “devastating” for the organisation and that Danker’s conduct had fallen “short of that expected of the director general”.

US presidents can “play a real role” in helping to unblock politics in Northern Ireland, the UK’s former prime minister Tony Blair said, hours before President Joe Biden was due to arrive in Belfast.

The brief visit by Biden, an Irish-American Catholic, will commemorate the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended three decades of conflict and established a power-sharing government.

The executive at Stormont has been in limbo for nearly a year, however, because the Democratic Unionist party has rejected post-Brexit trading rules for the region.

“The American president is still the American president,” Blair told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “I think if we do it in the right way, the involvement of the American president is positive.”

BP has acquired a 40 per cent stake in the UK’s Viking CCS project from Harbour Energy as the government looks to accelerate plans to develop carbon capture and storage.

The Viking project aims to meet up to a third of the UK’s annual target of capturing 30mn tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030, by repurposing old depleted gas fields off the Humber region coast.

There are also plans to ship in additional CO2 emissions from other parts of the UK and abroad through the port of Immingham.

Harbour, which is the largest producer in the UK North Sea, will operate the project with BP.

Sweden’s biggest pension fund has fired its chief executive after it lost almost $2bn on a failed bet on smaller US lenders that subsequently collapsed such as Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

Alecta, which has $110bn of assets under management, said on Tuesday that Magnus Billing had lost his job as chief executive with immediate effect as the large financial losses had “seriously damaged confidence” in its asset management.

“Alecta now needs to look ahead and forcefully implement the necessary changes,” said chair Ingrid Bonde.

Deputy chief executive Katarina Thornslund will take over until a permanent successor is found.

Northern Ireland: US president Joe Biden arrives on a state visit to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

UK labour: Junior doctors stage a 96-hour walkout in a protest over pay.

Credit Suisse: Switzerland’s parliament holds an extraordinary session to debate the deal negotiated by the government for UBS to buy Credit Suisse.

France: President Emmanuel Macron visits the Netherlands.

Economic data: Denmark, Norway and Ukraine publish March consumer price index figures.

Corporate earnings: French luxury house Christian Dior releases quarterly results.

Oil prices rose on Tuesday ahead of the release of data on US crude inventories, which analysts expect to show a contraction.

Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rose 0.6 per cent to trade at $84.71 per barrel while US marker West Texas Intermediate added 0.7 per cent to $80.32.

The US Energy Information Administration releases weekly figures on the country’s average crude oil stockpiles later on Tuesday, which analyst expect to show a contraction of about 1.3mn barrels, according to a Reuters poll.

Crude prices were also buoyed this month by the decision of Opec+ countries to cut production by more than 1mn barrels a day.

US gold miner Newmont has raised its offer for Australian rival Newcrest to A$29bn (US$19.5bn) as it bids to kick-start a consolidation of the global gold mining sector.

Newmont first approached the Australian company, which was once its subsidiary, in January before launching an all-share bid the following month. The rejected bid valued the company at almost $17bn.

The fresh bid — labelled best and final by Newmont — will see Newcrest shareholders control 31 per cent of the company. Newcrest on Tuesday said it will open its books to its American rival, which is already the world’s largest gold producer.

Trade tension between Australia and China has continued to ease after a breakthrough agreement announced on Tuesday would review steep tariffs imposed on barley. 

Australia has suspended a complaint to the World Trade Organization over Chinese tariffs of up to 80 per cent on its barley. Beijing has agreed to launch a new investigation into the dispute.

The tariffs were introduced in May 2020 when A$20bn ($13bn) worth of Australian goods, including coal, wine, lobsters and cotton, were hit with punitive sanctions. 

China imported barley worth about A$1.5bn a year — used in products such as Tsingtao beer — prior to the sanctions being imposed.

Bitcoin jumped above $30,000 for the first time in 10 months on Tuesday, as the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation was buoyed by investor fears over turmoil in the global banking sector.

Bitcoin rose 6.9 per cent in the past 24 hours to trade at $30,240.33, according to crypto data company CoinGecko, adding to gains of more than 80 per cent this year.

The rise comes amid a general rebound for risky technology stocks this year. Crypto has also been boosted by concerns over traditional investments triggered by banking sector turmoil in recent months.

China’s consumer price index rose at its slowest pace in 18 months in March, as the country’s recovery from years of zero-Covid curbs remains uneven.

The 0.7 per cent year-on-year rise in CPI fell short of analyst expectations for an increase of 1 per cent, driven by falling food prices, and was the slowest rate since September 2021.

Consumer prices declined 0.3 per cent over February, while producer prices fell 2.5 per cent.

The weak inflation readings are the latest sign of a mixed economic recovery in China after the country’s March purchasing managers’ indices showed a strong rebound for services but flagging demand for its massive manufacturing industry.

Economic data: China and Taiwan report consumer price index data. China’s CPI is expected to remain level at 1 per cent. China also reports producer price inflation.

Brazil-China: President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva arrives in Shanghai and will meet Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing later this week.

Bank of Korea: South Korea’s central bank makes an interest rate decision, in which is expected to stand pat. The bank kept rates unchanged at its last meeting after a series of increases.

IMF: The institution’s global financial stability report is released.

Asian equities rose on Tuesday morning, after a mixed day in the US as investors weighed the potential for further rate rises.

Japan’s Topix and South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.6 per cent and 0.5 per cent, respectively. Futures for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index pointed 1.4 per cent higher.

US stocks recovered from an early dip as markets reopened from the long Easter weekend on Monday, with investors weighing up the potential for more interest rate rises from the Federal Reserve.

The S&P 500 closed 0.1 per cent higher, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ended the day flat.

Twitter’s ex-leader Parag Agrawal and two other former executives are suing the Elon Musk-owned social media platform for failing to cover more than $1mn in personal legal expenses, including those related to an investigation by the US Department of Justice.

Agrawal, Twitter’s former general counsel Vijaya Gadde and Ned Segal, former chief financial officer, were fired by Musk when he acquired the platform for $44bn in October.

The trio claim that the company has “refused to acknowledge its obligations and to remit payment of any invoices”, after they personally incurred “significant expenses” responding to lawsuits and investigations related to their former positions.

Read more about Agrawal here.

Stocks recovered from an early dip as US equity markets reopened from the long Easter weekend on Monday, with investors weighing up the potential for more interest rate rises from the Federal Reserve.

The S&P 500 closed 0.1 per cent higher after a late pick-up, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ended the day flat despite dropping as much as 1.4 per cent in early trading.

Monday marked the first opportunity traders had to respond to data released on Friday showing the continued strength of the US labour market.

Read more on Monday’s market moves here.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reversed his decision to fire defence minister Yoav Gallant, amid deteriorating security that has left the country battling threats on multiple fronts.

Netanyahu originally said two weeks ago he would sack Gallant after the defence minister spoke out against the government’s controversial plans to weaken the powers of the judiciary. The minister warned that the deep polarisation caused by the proposals was undermining Israeli security.

Netanyahu’s decision sparked mass protests and a shortlived general strike that closed banks, shopping malls and even Israel’s international Ben Gurion airport, forcing Netanyahu to back down and postpone the bulk of the judicial overhaul until the next parliamentary session in May.

Read more about Gallant’s reinstatement here.