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Credit crunch

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Pub baron Jon Adgemis and steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta are under a mountain of debt.

Australia’s $1.8b bankruptcy case might be a taste of things to come

The collapse of the pub empire owned by playboy entrepreneur Jon Adgemis offers a glimpse of the massive risks for investors caught up in the opaque world of private credit.

  • Colin Kruger

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Are we hurtling towards the next market crash?

The next financial bubble is hidden in the shadows. Is it about to pop?

It’s not a soaring gold price or the crazy sharemarket valuations of anything connected to artificial intelligence that will push financial markets over the edge. It’s the murky world of shadow banking.

  • Matthew Lynn
ASIC chair Joseph Longo

‘What’s going on here?’: ASIC probes fast-growing private debt markets

The head of Australia’s corporate regulator wants more visibility when it comes to the private credit market, where companies go if the banks won’t lend.

  • Millie Muroi
A growing number of people are relying on Buy Now Pay Later credit to pay for essential bills, including food and energy.

‘The only avenue left’: Buy now, pay later used for food, bills

New research has found Australians are increasingly using buy now, pay later products for their essentials.

  • Anna Patty
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell: The US banking crisis is starting to hurt credit availability.

US bank woes could help spark a global credit crunch

The Federal Reserve Board has warned of a tightening supply of credit that could undermine global growth and send asset prices lower around the world.

  • Stephen Bartholomeusz
Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues will discuss the strength of US banks and the potential for a recession at a  meeting on Tuesday.

‘It’s spooky’: Half of America’s banks are already insolvent

There’s $13.5 trillion uninsured deposits in the US banking system. Such deposits can vanish in an afternoon in the cyber age.

  • Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
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Demonstrators outside the People’s Bank of China in Zhengzhou, Henan province.

China’s response to bank protests hints at a wider problem

China’s financial stresses are bubbling to the surface, with a heavy-handed response by the authorities to protests at the weekend by bank depositors whose funds have been frozen since April.

  • Stephen Bartholomeusz
Global sharemarkets are coming under increasing pressure.

Great unknown: Markets brace for turmoil as the Fed unwinds its 14-year experiment

The Fed didn’t just raise US interest rates with its biggest hike since 1994. It also made another move that is set to put vulnerable markets under more stress.

  • Stephen Bartholomeusz
Global sharemarkets remain at record levels.

The world’s riskiest debt sector is booming

There’s something quite perverse and disconcerting about seeing banks and other institutions flooding into the riskiest segment of debt markets as investors elsewhere start to head for the exits.

  • Stephen Bartholomeusz
China is experiencing the fastest expansion of the middle class the world has ever seen.

Does China know something the rest of the world doesn’t?

China’s change to its monetary policy has raised questions about just how concerned it is about its slowing economy.

  • Stephen Bartholomeusz