Wall Street Journal: World Markets

The revised list, released Wednesday, results from efforts by the EU to tighten longstanding measures against money laundering and terrorism financing since the publication of the Panama Papers in 2016, which revealed how global elites avoided taxes or laundered money through offshore shell companies.

Two decades after the launch of Europe’s single currency, the eurozone is again flirting with recession. It is fashionable to blame the euro, but even the most radical currency reforms wouldn’t solve the continent’s biggest underlying problem.

Chinese urban consumption has slowed rapidly, but rural consumers are doing well. That explains some of the media Sturm und Drang around Chinese consumers, but also hints at potential problems ahead.

Malaysia’s securities regulator imposed penalties on Deloitte for four breaches related to an Islamic bond program issued by a unit of state investment fund 1MDB.

Last summer, MSCI added stocks in China to one of its most prominent global benchmarks, leading billions of dollars to flow into Chinese shares and advancing China’s plans to draw more foreign investors to its markets.

Puerto Rico’s federal supervisors are making a final push to write down $18 billion in sales-tax bonds under a settlement that would mark their largest renegotiation yet of the U.S.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

The global economy is starting the year on weaker footing, particularly by poor performance out of Europe, according to new quarterly forecasts from the IMF.

Qatar pledged to shore up Lebanon’s ailing economy by buying $500 million’s worth of governments bonds, in a move that muscles in on rival Saudi Arabia’s role as Beirut’s financial patron.

Lim Guan Eng waved off an apology from Goldman Sachs Chief Executive David Solomon for the role of one its then-bankers in the scandal surrounding state investment fund 1MDB, saying it wasn’t enough.

Finance Minister Carlos Urzúa and his deputy, who met with investors in New York a month after Andrés Manuel López Obrador became president, tout their “market-friendly” fiscal plans.