Good morning everyone. With bank runs accelerating in Greece, the ECB decided to pull the plug on their Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA), forcing Greek banks to remain closed on Monday, opening the door for capital controls, and giving Alexis Tsipras the chance to blame the ECB for any future bank failures. Bad move, Mario. This will likely clinch the July 5 referendum.
Here’s what else you should know:
Hong Kong recaptures global IPO crown. With capital-raisings soaring over three-fold in the second quarter, Hong Kong has finally regained its crown as the global leader in IPOs, eclipsing both Shanghai and New York. The city’s financial industry raised over $50 billion in various offerings over the past six months, posting its strongest performance to date. SCMP (paywall)
Asian markets to open mixed. A lot of danger signs loom over the Asian markets today as the Nikkei gets quoted down 2.2% on the SGX while China A50 futures drop 1.4% despite the PBoC’s surprise interest rate cut over the weekend. Futures on Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index meanwhile, are up 0.2%. MarketWatch/Financial Times (paywall)
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket breaks up after lift-off. Elon Musk’s SpaceX had a pretty bad day earlier after seeing its unmanned Falcon 9 rocket break up after liftoff. Succeeding flights are expected to be suspended. WSJ (paywall)
Photo credit: Hector Romero via Flickr