financialnews

An Australian regulator in the area of competition and consumer protection said on Tuesday that it has begun court proceedings against Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) over alleged violations of consumer protection legislation in connection with the Prime Video service.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said that Amazon included unfair contract terms in Prime subscription agreements, and subsequently used them to run advertising in the Prime Video streaming service.

Sovereign wealth funds and central banks with assets of $29 trillion are planning to cut their equity holdings en masse, Invesco found. The rapid development of artificial intelligence has upended financial markets: the largest investors are shifting money from overvalued shares of tech giants into AI infrastructure, private instruments, and gold.

The number of individual shareholders of Sberbank by June 2026 has grown to 2.4 million people. This is stated in a message from the brokerage company SberInvestments.
Most individual shareholders of Sberbank are from Moscow and the Moscow Region, Saint Petersburg, Krasnodar Krai, and Sverdlovsk Oblast. As for the age distribution, more than half of the shareholders (56%) are aged 25–44, 29% are between 45 and 64, 6% are under 24, and 8% are older than 65.

The European Union dropped a new tax reform package on Wednesday, aimed at lightening the regulatory load on businesses within the bloc.
According to the European Commission, the proposed measures could save companies up to €8 billion ($9.1 billion) annually on compliance costs — pending approval from EU member states.

T-Bank has ramped up its net profit under RAS to 73.6 billion rubles from January to May 2026, which is 8.3 times higher than the result for the same period last year.
For comparison: in the first 5 months of 2025, the bank only made 8.9 billion rubles. This data was revealed in a release from the parent company 'T-Technologies', published on June 24.

Morgan Stanley's North Haven Private Income fund, with a volume of $7 billion, and Apollo Debt Solutions, with a volume of $26 billion, have once again put a 5% withdrawal limit on investor funds for the second consecutive quarter. Meanwhile, the volume of requests has exceeded this threshold by two to three times. In the current quarter, withdrawal requests in the private credit market have generally increased after many private funds failed to fully satisfy investor requests for selling shares in the previous quarter, as noted by Bloomberg.

The Ministry of Finance has announced that there will be no auctions for federal loan bonds (OFZ) on Wednesday, June 24. This decision was explained by the ministry as a measure to assist in stabilizing the market situation.
Generally, the Ministry of Finance holds auctions for OFZ placements every Wednesday.
In Q2, the ministry planned to place OFZs worth 1.5 trillion rubles. In total, there were plans for 13 auction days.

UK fintech startup Revolut, founded by Nikolay Storonsky, is aiming to kick off operations in South Africa by 2028 and is already seeing significant interest in its services from potential clients in the continent's largest economy, writes Bloomberg.
Details
Revolut is gearing up to launch its proprietary ecosystem of offerings in South Africa, tailored specifically for the local market, reported Bloomberg's Jacques Meyer, who heads the company's operations in SA. According to him, the organization submitted a license application to the South African Reserve Bank in September and will roll out its products, including zero-fee accounts, to local clients as soon as it gets the green light from the regulator.

The Argentine government has approved raising up to $5 billion in funding from international organizations with the backing of multilateral lending structures, according to a decree published in the official gazette on Monday.
President Javier Milei signed a decree alongside Economy Minister Luis Caputo and Administration Chief Manuel Adorni. The funding goal is to lower borrowing costs through dollar loans with partial multilateral guarantees.

The Belgian government has kicked off the process of offloading a 20% stake in the retail bank Belfius through a private placement valued at around €2 billion ($2.3 billion), as reported on Monday by the Federal Holding and Investment Company of Belgium.
SFPIM, acting on behalf of the Belgian state, has appointed Bank of America Securities as the sole financial advisor to manage the deal. Interested investors need to submit their letters of intent to Bank of America by July 3, with participation limited to accredited investors.

The Reserve Bank of India offloaded a net $8.94 billion in the forex market in April to support the rupee, which hit record lows amid the US-Iran conflict, according to data released on Monday.
The central bank bought $16.23 billion and shorted $25.17 billion during the month, RBI reported in its monthly bulletin. In March, the bank had a net short of $9.8 billion.

On June 27, the "Invest Weekend" festival, organized by RBC and Sber Investments, will take place. Ahead of this event, "RBC Investments" surveyed top financiers in the country and asked them the question: "What’s the rate?" Experts highlighted three crucial rates that are relevant right now: a focus on retail investors, development of the stock market, and macroeconomics.

The U.S. and Qatar are crafting a plan that will allow Iran to access $6 billion in frozen assets for humanitarian purchases, reports the Wall Street Journal citing informed sources.
According to the proposal, Tehran will be able to use funds stored in Qatar to acquire food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods through the Central Bank of Iran.

At the meeting on June 19, the Board of Directors of the Bank of Russia decided to lower the key rate to 14.25%. This move didn't align with the expectations of the RBC consensus forecast participants: only two out of 30 experts anticipated a rate cut of exactly 25 basis points, while the majority expected a move of 50 basis points.

UK authorities slapped a fine of over £1 million ($1.3 million) on the American ticketing and booking company Sabre for breaching sanctions against Russia. The aggregator was working with the Russian airline Ural Airlines after the sanctions kicked in back in 2022.

The Egyptian pound has become the top-performing currency in the world after a sharp drop in oil prices due to the US and Iran's agreement to reopen the Hormuz Strait— a move expected to restore supply and ease inflation fears. This is reported by <a>Bloomberg</a>.

European government bond yields have continued to slide for the fifth session in a row on Wednesday, as bond markets digested new details of the peace deal between the US and Iran, leading to further reevaluation of interest rate expectations.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year German bonds (Bunds) — the eurozone's benchmark — has dropped to 2.919%, the lowest since early April. At the same time, the yield on 2-year bonds, which are sensitive to policy and closely tied to short-term forecasts from the European Central Bank, has decreased to 2.56%.

How can you 'hear' the future returns of a company's stocks? Researchers from the University of Limerick and S&P Global Market Intelligence say to check how top management responds to analysts' questions during conference calls. It turns out that more detailed answers provided nearly a 4% additional return annually. How does this work and how can it help investors better evaluate their investments?

Russian authorities are continuing to seize private companies for state ownership. This process, which experts have dubbed "nationalization," gained momentum after Russia's military invasion of Ukraine and has currently affected hundreds of enterprises, with assets valued at several trillion rubles. However, this doesn't mean the state has become wealthier by that amount.