The Brief

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said 19 G20 members had agreed that persistent low-priced exports causing global imbalances needed to be addressed, with China the only dissenter, while urging other governments to consider tariffs and other measures to protect domestic jobs and manufacturing after US trade barriers redirected Chinese goods towards their markets.

The commercially relevant change is therefore political rather than legal, because the meeting produced no reported common trade measure, but Bessent’s account suggests concern over diverted Chinese exports now extends well beyond Washington, increasing the prospect that individual governments consider their own restrictions rather than leaving the US to act alone.

Chinese exporters are most exposed if that sentiment becomes policy, because additional national barriers would make more overseas markets harder to access, while manufacturers competing with those imports would receive greater protection from the low-priced foreign supply governments are being urged to address

The important next step is therefore not whether the G20 produces a single tariff regime, but whether separate governments begin converting the same concern into domestic measures, because that would turn one US-China trade dispute into a broader set of market-access constraints that Chinese producers have to navigate independently.

The yen strengthened to ¥157.6 against the dollar and also rose against the euro and sterling after BoJ board member Hajime Takata said future rate increases would not follow a fixed pace, governor Kazuo Ueda said rates would be discussed at every forthcoming meeting, and markets moved to price about 50 basis points of cumulative tightening by year-end.

The mechanism is a widening of the range of rate outcomes investors must price between meetings, because Takata explicitly opened the possibility of less regular and potentially larger adjustments while Ueda made every meeting a live policy decision, leaving investors less able to rely on a predetermined tightening schedule.

Japanese financial institutions stand to become more willing to hold domestic assets as those yields rise, with the article noting that successful long-dated bond auctions could encourage life insurers and other large institutions to invest more capital at home, while issuers of Japanese debt face materially higher borrowing costs than during the country’s long period of very low rates.

If every BoJ meeting now carries more meaningful rate risk, investors will demand compensation for holding exposures whose returns depend on Japanese financing remaining stable, so the significance of this shift extends beyond the next hike to a permanently higher sensitivity of currencies and long-duration assets to each new policy signal.

Lottomatica agreed to acquire CIRSA in a €2.8bn all-share deal offering 0.668 new Lottomatica shares for each CIRSA share, implying €16.55 a share and a premium of just over 21 per cent, while CIRSA will distribute a €262mn extraordinary dividend before an expected second-quarter 2027 completion that remains subject to both companies’ shareholder approval.

The stated rationale is geographic and earnings diversification, because Lottomatica has concentrated its strategy on Italy while CIRSA is the Spanish market leader, and management argues that combining the businesses adds more stable growth while generating €115mn of pre-tax cash benefits within three years of completion.

CIRSA shareholders receive the immediate benefit of the premium and retain exposure to the combined business through Lottomatica shares, with Blackstone becoming its largest investor at 24 per cent, while existing Lottomatica shareholders accept dilution and execution risk in return for greater exposure to Spain and the promised cash benefits; the 9.6 per cent fall in Lottomatica shares shows that investors reacted negatively to the announcement.

The deal therefore depends less on paying a low headline price than on proving that diversification and the €115mn benefit target compensate existing shareholders for surrendering part of their ownership, making post-deal integration and delivery of the promised cash gains the clearest test of whether issuing equity was worthwhile.