The ECB and BOE took cues from the Fed to raise their own benchmark rate by 50 bps -- a slight step down from 75 basis points in previous months.
The rate increase brings the US federal funds rate to a target range of 4.25% to 4.5%, the highest point in 15 years.
It comes after weaker than anticipated US inflation figures on Wednesday, which eased 0.1% last month slowing the annual figure to 7.1% from 7.7%. Separate US retail sales figures released Friday showed an unexpected sharp decline in spending in November, fanning fears the US will not remain immune from a recession.
On the domestic front, RBA governor Philip Lowe gave his last speech of the year as the central bank chief, during which he indicated he would like to stay on for a second term.
Mr Lowe has been slammed for his communication during the pandemic warning borrowers interest rates were set to be on hold until at least 2024.
“We have got to get inflation down and that is my focus, and I will do that until at least September next year,” Mr Lowe said.
Natural food for all your family.
Retail powerhouse Woolworths has agreed to buy Perspiration Group on Thursday.
The 55% interest in the pet speciality retailer, whose value is pegged at $586-million, will be purchased by the company.
Petspiration runs the retail brand PETstock which has 276 physical stores and ecommerce channels membership programs.
Woolworths Group chief executive Brad Banducci says the range of products offered at stores in the group is critical as demand for 'speciality' pet products increases.
“Specialty pet is a large and growing retail segment where we have limited presence,” Mr Banducci said.
Woolworths shares rallied 0.73% after the announcement on Thursday and were 0.4% weaker at the end of the week.
Crypto kerfuffle continues
You might think things couldn’t get any worse for Sam Bankman-Fried, the collapsed former CEO and founder of crypto exchange FTX.
But now things have gone from bad to worse after he was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday.
Bankman-Fried now faces eight criminal counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to commit fraud in the US.
A sealed criminal indictment from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York alleges that since FTX was founded in 2019, Bankman-Fried has participated in a scheme to defraud equity investors.
Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda, created in 2017 was also under attack in the criminal indictment that accuses him of shifting customer assets to the hedge fund to make his own trades.
“But from the outset, Bankman-Fried improperly moved customer funds out of the safekeeping of BlockFi, the savings account-like lending platform that held them, to another of his companies – a privately held entity called Alameda Research LLC (“Alameda”) – and then deployed those customer funds into undisclosed risky investments in the form of venture investments, richly priced luxury residential real estate purchases, and substantial political donations,” the SEC alleged.
But what about Tesla, Elon?
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has again offloaded additional Tesla shares this week, selling a total of $5.37 billion (US$3.6b) of Tesla shares over the past Monday through to Wednesday.
The sale of 22 million shares was the second largest disposal by Musk, who offloaded $65 billion (US$44b) of Twitter in October.
Musk had claimed he had sold all the stock he would sell in April But this week The latest dumping of stocks this week brings Musk’s cash out to $ about $59 billion ($US40b) for the year.
The electric car maker’s stock has tanked this year, dropping more than 60% since the beginning of January. Shares traded down this week to US$157.57, a 12% peak-to-trough decline.
