Latest news updates: Second day of selling leaves Paytm down 35% from IPO price

EU: The bloc releases flash consumer confidence figures on Monday. Eurozone consumer confidence cooled in August amid fears of the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19, but remained above its pre-pandemic level.

Switzerland: The general council of the World Trade Organization will meet in Geneva. The Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights will submit an overview of India and South Africa’s request for a waiver that aims to speed up the development and deployment of Covid-19 vaccines.

UK: The CBI publishes its monthly industrial trends survey. In September, the CBI said labour supply problems could last for up to two years and would not be solved by the end of the UK’s job retention scheme.

Markets: Asian stocks started the week mixed, with benchmark indices in Hong Kong, Japan and Australia all dropping on Monday, while South Korea and mainland China advanced. FTSE 100 futures were up 0.2 per cent and Euro Stoxx 50 futures were up 0.1 per cent.

Shares in Paytm dropped further in their second day of trading, taking the Indian payments and financial technology company a third below its issuance price and raising further questions about its record initial public offering last week.

Paytm, which had sold itself as India’s all-purpose financial platform, had raised a record $2.5bn from the IPO, valuing it at about $20bn and setting up a massive payday for major backers including Chinese fintech giant Ant Group and Japan’s SoftBank.

But shares in the company closed 27 per cent lower on Thursday and fell another 10 per cent during morning trading on Monday as markets reopened in Mumbai following a holiday on Friday. That brought Paytm about 35 per cent lower from its IPO pricing and reflected a drop of almost $8bn for the company’s market capitalisation over just two days.

Critics of the company say it has little competitive advantage as foreign rivals including Google and Walmart-owned Flipkart have eaten away at its market share of mobile payments.

And brokerage Macquarie has tipped Paytm to drop even further, setting a target price for shares of Rs1,200 ($16.16) that indicates a 44 per cent downside from their issuance price.

Most markets in Asia-Pacific fell on Monday as investors began the week on a cautious note.

Markets in Australia dropped the most, with the S&P/ASX 200 falling as much as 0.8 per cent in the morning, before recovering to losses of 0.5 per cent.

Japan’s Topix shed up to 0.7 per cent but recovered to losses of 0.3 per cent by around midday, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell as much as 0.5 per cent.

China and South Korea bucked the trend, with the CSI 300 gaining 0.6 per cent and South Korea’s Kospi up 1.3 per cent.

Robert Carnell, head of Asia-Pacific research at ING Bank, said that global investors were in a “risk-off” mood this week as they considered a surge in Covid-19 in Europe, the potential for further monetary tightening in the US and signals from Chinese authorities that they might intervene to combat the rising cost of the renminbi.

Australia will ease entry requirements for visa-holding travellers from the beginning of next month in a significant easing of some of the world’s strictest pandemic border controls.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that fully vaccinated holders of 28 types of visa — including visas for working holidays — would be allowed to enter the country without applying for a travel exemption. The move extended an easing of restrictions that originally applied only to Australian citizens, permanent residents and their families.

Morrison also said Australia would allow visa-less arrivals from Japan and South Korea to enter without quarantine from December, one day after a similar arrangement began for arrivals from Singapore.

Karen Andrews, home affairs minister, estimated that the new rules for visa holders would allow about 200,000 people to enter the country.

Andrews added that visa-holding arrivals would be subject to the quarantine arrangements of their state of arrival, which vary significantly.

In New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory, fully vaccinated arrivals are not subject to quarantine, while those in Queensland must undergo 14 days of isolation in a designated hotel at their own expense.

At least 20 people were injured on Sunday afternoon by a truck that drove through a Christmas parade in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The Waukesha police department said a person of interest had been identified and the vehicle allegedly responsible for the injuries had been recovered. An unconfirmed number of people were taken to hospitals, police said.

Videos of the parade showed a red sports utility vehicle accelerating into the participants.

Read more about the Wisconsin parade.

Asian stocks looked set to fall on Monday, with futures in Hong Kong and Japan down and Australian equities dropping in early trading.

The S&P/ASX 200 fell as much as 0.8 per cent after markets opened, while Topix futures in Japan were down 0.6 per cent. Futures in Hong Kong were also down.

On Friday, US government bonds advanced while stocks fell as fresh coronavirus curbs in Europe and hawkish comments from US policymakers prompted investors to shift to safe-haven assets.

The broad-based S&P 500 equity index closed the day down 0.1 per cent after fluctuating between minor losses and gains, as a rise in technology stocks was tempered by falls for financial services groups and US energy companies. Despite the loss, the index ended the week 0.3 per cent higher.

The Nasdaq Composite index, which is stacked with tech and healthcare companies, ended the day up 0.4 per cent, marking its second consecutive record close.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, meanwhile, fell 0.04 percentage points to 1.55 per cent as the benchmark debt security rose in price.

Chileans will cast their ballots on Sunday in the first general election since mass anti-government demonstrations two years ago, with voters leaning towards extremes as they reject the political establishment.

The elections, which will probably go to a run-off in December, are seen as a referendum on the Chilean economic model that has delivered some of the best growth in Latin America in recent decades but failed to share the benefits widely among the population.

“Those who are poor, die poor. The riches of our country are badly distributed,” said Carolina Cavieres, a 35-year-old mother of two who was casting her vote in La Pintana, a working-class suburb to the south of Santiago.

Outside the polling station, 50-year-old José Peredo, who moved to La Pintana in 1983 when it was still countryside, said Chileans were disillusioned because “[the elite] want all the cake for themselves . . . they promised us equality if we became a democracy, and see what we have”. He gestured towards the lines of cramped social housing that overlooked a congested highway.

Read more about Chile’s election.

China policy rate decision: Policymakers are expected to keep China’s benchmark interest rate steady as they seek to limit risk in the real estate sector.

Economic data: Thailand’s third-quarter employment data and household debt figures are set to be published, as well as data from Hong Kong’s monthly consumer price index and Taiwan’s revised third quarter gross domestic product.

Markets: Asian stocks looked set to fall on Monday with futures in Hong Kong and Japan down and Australian equities dropping in early trading. US stocks fell on Friday as fresh coronavirus curbs in Europe and hawkish comments from US policymakers prompted investors to shift to safe-haven assets.

HSBC bosses fear they will struggle to convince some of the UK’s largest accounting firms to bid for the bank’s $94m-a-year audit after initial outreach to contenders suggested a number of Big Four firms were reluctant to take on the role.

The UK’s largest lender is preparing to tender next year for the audit of its accounts from 2025, people with knowledge of the matter told the Financial Times.

HSBC has been audited since 2015 by PwC, which is eligible to bid for another 10 years in the role.

But the bank is already expecting difficulty in attracting pitches from the other Big Four accountants — Deloitte, EY and KPMG — because some candidates have expressed concerns over possible conflicts with lucrative consulting projects and the scale of resources needed to audit it, people familiar with the matter said.

The number of jurisdictions in which HSBC operated, the resources and technology required, and the risk involved were all issues in attracting auditors to bid, one of the people said.

Read more about HSBC’s audit.