By Luc Cohen and Chris Prentice

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department will soon propose a rule that would effectively end anonymous luxury-home purchases, closing a loophole that the agency says allows corrupt oligarchs, terrorists and other criminals to hide ill-gotten gains.

The long-awaited rule is expected to require that real estate professionals such as title insurers report the identities of the beneficial owners of companies buying real estate in cash to the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

FinCEN is slated to propose the rule sometime this month, according to its regulatory agenda, though the timeline could slip, said two people briefed on the developments. Anti-corruption advocates and lawmakers have been pushing for the rule, which will replace the current patchwork reporting system.

Criminals have for decades anonymously hidden ill-gotten gains in real estate, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in March, adding that as much as $2.3 billion was laundered through U.S. real estate between 2015 and 2020.

"That's why FinCEN is taking this important step to put something officially on the books that would root out money laundering through the sector once and for all," said Erica Hanichak, government affairs director of advocacy group the FACT Coalition.

Some advocates say FinCEN, which declined to comment on the timing of the proposal, has moved too slowly. Officials first said in 2021 that they planned to implement the rule.

FinCEN has been struggling to complete a related rule that would unmask shell company owners. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has pressed FinCEN to tighten up that proposal, according to an April public letter. That debate has slowed down FinCEN's work on the real estate reporting rule, one of the sources said.

The American Land Title Association, which represents title insurers, says it welcomes the new rule but that FinCEN should delay it until the shell company rule is completed.

The proposed rule will be open to public and industry feedback.

PATCHWORK

While banks have long been required to understand the source of customer funds and report suspicious transactions, no such rules exist nationwide for the real estate industry.

Instead, FinCEN has operated real estate purchase disclosure rules, known as geographic targeting orders (GTOs), in just a handful of cities including New York, Miami and Los Angeles. The new rule is expected to effectively expand GTOs nationwide.

FinCEN implemented GTOs in 2016 after the New York Times revealed that nearly half of luxury real estate was bought by anonymous shell companies.

But the orders are easy to skirt by simply buying property outside the targeted areas, said Jodi Vittori, an expert on illicit finance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Transparency advocates pushing for a nationwide rule point to the example of Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese businessman who, according to prosecutors, used an anonymous shell company to channel illicit profit from a fraud scheme into the $26 million purchase of a 50,000-square-foot New Jersey mansion in December 2021.

Had Guo brought property across the Hudson (NYSE:HUD) River in Manhattan, it would have been subject to a GTO and likely flagged immediately to law enforcement.

Guo, a onetime business partner of former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon, has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges. His lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.

A FinCEN spokesperson said GTO reports provide valuable data.

Howard Master, a formal federal prosecutor, said law enforcement uses them to generate leads, but mainly to learn more about assets owned by individuals already under investigation.

"It'll identify an asset that is beneficially owned by someone that you might not otherwise have known about," said Master, now a partner at investigations firm Nardello & Co.

A 2020 report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, found that nearly 7% of GTO reports identified individuals or entities connected to ongoing FBI cases. But the same report highlighted concerns about the ability of FinCEN, which has complained of chronic underfunding, to police the program.

For the new rule to be effective, FinCEN will need more enforcement resources, said David Szakonyi, a political science professor at George Washington University.

"FinCEN needs more people and more computers to process the information."

By Safiyah Riddle

(Reuters) - U.S. mortgage delinquency rates fell to a record low in the second quarter due to a strong job market and low interest rates prevailing on most home loans despite the big jump in mortgage rates over the last two years, a report on Thursday said.

Delinquency rates fell to 3.37% at the end of the second quarter, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Delinquency Survey, their lowest since the MBA began collecting data in 1979 and down from 3.64% year-on-year.

Seriously delinquent loans, which are 90 days or more past due or in the process of foreclosure, fell to the lowest non-seasonally adjusted rate in 23 years at 1.61%.

Economists are watching mortgage delinquency rates closely for signs of weakness amidst the Federal Reserve's aggressive 525 basis point interest rate increase since March 2022, which increased the cost of borrowing across the board.

While the MBA said many borrowers have been able to withstand surging mortgage costs in large part due to a resilient job market and strong wage growth throughout the year, most homeowners are also paying interest rates well below those charged on new loans.

Real estate brokers estimated in June that more than eight in 10 loans outstanding featured at rate below 5% at the end of 2022, well below the MBA's most recent contract rate above 7%. More than six in 10 pay 4% or less.

While the share of those paying such low rates is declining, many homeowners are opting to remain where they are rather than move and take on a new loan at current rates, which are approaching a 22-year high.

Despite the historically low delinquency rate, the MBA said not every borrower has been able to withstand the recent stress of hiked interest rates.

The delinquency rate on loans for low-income and first-time buyers, backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), edged up 10 basis points annually to 8.95% in the second quarter.

Separately on Thursday, the National Association of Realtors released a report showing that the median home price in the second quarter fell 2.4% year-on-year to $406,000, albeit with significant variations nationwide.

“Home sales were down due to higher mortgage rates and limited inventory,” said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun. “Affordability challenges are easing due to moderating and, in some cases, falling home prices, while the number of jobs and incomes are increasing.”

(Reuters) - European stocks rose on Thursday as investors digested a slew of corporate earnings and awaited U.S. inflation print that will likely determine the Federal Reserve's monetary policy path.

The pan-European STOXX 600 added 0.4% by 0707 GMT, having closed at a one-week high in the previous session.

U.S. stock futures rose ahead of data expected to show a slight acceleration in July consumer prices. On a month-to-month basis, CPI is seen increasing 0.2%, the same as in June. [.N]

Europe's personal & household goods sector, which houses the largest luxury brands, gained 1.1% after China lifted its pandemic-era restrictions on group tours for more countries.

Lifting insurers, Germany's Allianz (ETR:ALVG) gained 2.1% and Zurich Insurance rose 1.6% after both the companies reported better-than-expected results.

Limiting gains, Siemens slumped 3.5% after the German engineering group missed third-quarter profit estimates.

Denmark's Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) slipped nearly 1% after the drugmaker said it will continue to restrict U.S. supplies of starter doses of its hugely popular Wegovy weight-loss drug.

By Kevin Buckland and Brigid Riley

TOKYO (Reuters) - The dollar rose to a one-month high above 144 yen on Thursday as monetary policy divergence was front of investors' minds ahead of crucial U.S. inflation data later in the day that should guide the path for interest rates.

Meanwhile, the yuan edged further from a one-month trough after the People's Bank of China again set a stronger-than-expected mid-point guidance rate in a sign of displeasure at recent weakness. That helped lift the Australian and New Zealand dollars from near two-month lows.

The dollar rose as high as 144.08 yen for the first time since July 7 as markets took the view that the Bank of Japan will be slow to exit stimulus, even with traders mostly betting the Fed is done with rate hikes.

A rise in crude oil to the highest since January also weighed on Japan's currency, because the resource-poor nation is a major oil importer.

"The fact that energy prices have risen for almost seven weeks, that's certainly weighed on the yen," said Tony Sycamore, a market analyst at IG.

A break above 145 would open the way potentially to 148 "if we get the U.S. dollar flexing again after the CPI," he said.

Despite the BOJ's decision to relax its control of long-term yields at the end of last month, policymakers have stressed the change was a technical tweak aimed at extending the shelf life of stimulus, chiefly defined by the negative short-term interest rate.

"Weak Japanese labour cash earnings data earlier this week has increased our conviction that the BOJ will leave interest rates unchanged at ‑0.1% over the rest of the year," Commonwealth Bank of Australia (OTC:CMWAY) strategist Kristina Clifton wrote in a note.

"The relative monetary policy outlooks between the U.S. and Japan suggests USD/JPY is likely to stay supported."

Against other rivals, dollar moves were muted ahead of the CPI data, with the U.S. dollar index - which measures the currency against the yen and five other currencies, including the euro and sterling - was basically flat at 102.50 in the Asian afternoon, near the centre of its roughly 101.98 to 102.80 trading range this week.

Compared to last Friday though, the index has appreciated 0.5%, setting it up for a fourth straight weekly gain.

The dollar has benefited from safe-haven demand in the wake of a run of poor Chinese economic data, while the narrative continues to build for a soft landing for the U.S. economy as price pressures mitigate.

Wall Street economists forecast the core consumer price index (CPI) to have risen 4.8% year-on-year in July, unchanged from the previous month.

Money markets currently lay 86.5% odds for the Fed to forgo another rate hike at its September meeting, and foresee the next move as a cut, likely in spring of next year.

Data on Wednesday showed the Chinese economy slipped into deflation last month, after a report the previous day showed a bigger than expected slump for both imports and exports.

However, the yuan edged up slightly to 7.2246 per dollar in offshore trading, strengthening for a second day, after the PBOC set a stronger official mid-point than the market consensus again on Thursday. The offshore yuan sank to the weakest since July 7 at 7.2514 on Tuesday.

The Aussie, which has tended to follow the yuan closely this week, rose 0.15% to $0.65385, rebounding from Tuesday's trough at $0.6497, the lowest level since June 1.

New Zealand's kiwi rose 0.1% to $0.6058, pulling away from Tuesday's low of $0.6035, which was the weakest since June 8.

(Reuters) -Financial losses due to supply chain disruptions dropped more than 50% on average in 2022, compared with a year earlier, but shortages and delivery delays remain challenges, according to a survey of companies being released on Thursday.

Disruptions led to an average $82 million in annual losses per company last year in key industries like aerospace, compared with $182 million in 2021, and $184 million in 2020, supply- chain risk management company Interos told Reuters ahead of publication.

The 2023 report data refers to disruptions from a year earlier as the survey was conducted in spring 2023 but asked about the preceding 12 months.

In this latest report, Interos surveyed 750 companies with annual revenues between $500 million and $50 billion from energy, financial services, oil and gas, healthcare, government and aerospace.

"The key takeaway is that people recognize it's better than it was, but it will not go back to the way that it was in 2019," said Interos industry analyst Tim White.

Labor and raw material constraints, as well as unforeseen disruptions remain supply chain headwinds, White said.

Executives were surveyed in the U.S., Canada and the UK and Ireland.

Globally, companies on Wednesday cited supply chains as an ongoing challenge, with Danish-listed turbine maker Vestas saying it expects disruption to continue for the rest of 2023.

Aptiv (NYSE:APTV) PLC said despite improvements in the supply chain, higher semiconductor pricing remains a challenge.

By David Milliken

LONDON (Reuters) - British house prices saw the most widespread falls since 2009 last month as interest rates hit a 15-year high, while rents surged by the most since 1999 as more landlords sold up, a survey showed on Thursday.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said its house price balance, which measures the difference between the percentage of surveyors reporting price rises and falls, dropped to -53 in July from a downwardly revised -48 for June.

This was the lowest reading since April 2009, during the depths of the global financial crisis, and below economists' forecasts in a Reuters poll for a drop to -50.

Interest rates for the commonest type of new mortgage in Britain - a two-year fixed rate - rose to their highest since 2008 at 6.86% in July, on expectations of further rate rises by the Bank of England as it battles high inflation.

Property sales fell in July at the fastest pace since April 2020 when the market was largely shut by the COVID-19 pandemic, and demand from prospective buyers also sank, according to RICS.

"The continued weak reading for the new buyer enquiries metric is indicative of the challenges facing prospective purchasers against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, rising interest rates and a tougher credit environment," RICS Chief Economist Simon Rubinsohn said.

Mortgage lender Nationwide reported last week that average house prices in July were 3.8% lower than a year earlier, the biggest annual fall since 2009, while earlier this week rival Halifax reported a 2.4% year-on-year decline.

Prices remain more than 20% higher than before the pandemic, however.

Conditions for renters were no easier, as some landlords sold up in the face of higher mortgage costs and increased regulation for the sector to require better energy efficiency and make it harder to evict tenants.

RICS' gauge of rents in the three months to July saw surveyors report the broadest increases since the series began in 1999. Demand from tenants rose at the fastest pace since early 2022, while the number of properties being offered by landlords fell by the most since the early in the pandemic.

Britain's Office for National Statistics reported that private-sector rents in England rose 5.1% in the year to June, the most since records began in 2006.

By Karen Freifeld, Andrea Shalal and David Shepardson

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order that will prohibit some new U.S. investment in China in sensitive technologies like computer chips and require government notification in other tech sectors.

The long-awaited order authorizes the U.S. Treasury secretary to prohibit or restrict U.S. investments in Chinese entities in three sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies and certain artificial intelligence systems.

The administration said the restrictions would apply to "narrow subsets" of the three areas but did not give specifics. The proposal is open for public input.

The order is aimed at preventing American capital and expertise from helping China develop technologies that could support its military modernization and undermine U.S. national security. The measure targets private equity, venture capital, joint ventures and greenfield investments.

Biden, a Democrat, said in a letter to Congress he was declaring a national emergency to deal with the threat of advancement by countries like China "in sensitive technologies and products critical to the military, intelligence, surveillance or cyber-enabled capabilities."

SEMICONDUCTORS A PRIORITY

The proposal focuses on investments in Chinese companies developing software to design computer chips and tools to manufacture them. The U.S., Japan and the Netherlands dominate those fields, and the Chinese government has been working to build homegrown alternatives.

The White House said Biden consulted allies on the plan and incorporated feedback from Group of Seven nations.

"For too long, American money has helped fuel the Chinese military’s rise," said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. "Today the United States is taking a strategic first step to ensure American investment does not go to fund Chinese military advancement."

The regulations will only affect future investments, not existing ones, Treasury said, but it may ask for disclosure of prior transactions.

The move could fuel tensions between the world's two largest economies. The Chinese embassy in Washington said it was "very disappointed" by the measure.

U.S. officials insisted the prohibitions were intended to address "the most acute" national security risks and not to separate the two countries' highly interdependent economies.

Republicans said the order was rife with loopholes, such as only applying to future investment, and was not aggressive enough.

SOME EXEMPTIONS EXPECTED

The order will prohibit some deals and require investors to notify the government of their plans on others.

The Treasury said it anticipates exempting "certain transactions, including potentially those in publicly traded instruments and intracompany transfers from U.S. parents to subsidiaries."

The Chinese tech industry, once a magnet for U.S. venture capital, has already seen a drastic decline in U.S. investment amid intensifying geopolitical tension.

Last year, total U.S.-based venture-capital investment in China plummeted to $9.7 billion from $32.9 billion in 2021, according to PitchBook data. This year so far, U.S. V.C. investors only put $1.2 billion into Chinese tech startups.

The measure is expected to be implemented next year, a person briefed on the order said, after multiple rounds of public comment, including an initial 45-day comment period.

REPUBLICAN SEES MANY LOOPHOLES

Republican Senator Marco Rubio said the Biden administration' plan was "almost laughable."

"It is riddled with loopholes, explicitly ignores the dual-use nature of important technologies, and fails to include industries China’s government deems critical," he said.

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington said the White House had not heeded "China’s repeated expression of deep concerns" about the plan.

The spokesman said more than 70,000 U.S. companies do business in China. The restrictions will hurt both Chinese and American businesses, interfere with normal cooperation and reduce investor confidence in the U.S., he said.

The Semiconductor Industry Association said it hopes the order will enable "U.S. chip firms to compete on a level-playing field and access key global markets, including China."

Emily Benson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a bipartisan policy research organization, said key questions are how the plan affects U.S. allies and how China responds.

By Tom Sims

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany has long benefited from an era of cheap money that fuelled a decade-long boom in real estate, but now the sector is grappling with a major turn of fortune.

In the latest signs of stress in the sector, Germany's largest real estate group Vonovia posted multi-billion euro losses and writedowns, and job growth for construction workers has stagnated.

Here are some key questions as the crisis unfolds:

WHY DO WE CARE ABOUT GERMANY?

Weakness in real estate has also emerged in the United States and Sweden, but Germany is significant because it is Europe's largest economy and the biggest real estate investment market on the continent.

The property sector makes up roughly a fifth of economic output and one in ten jobs, according to the German Property Federation.

HOW BAD IS IT?

New construction plummeted in Germany during the first half of the year, dropping 47% compared with the average of the past two years, and new building permits plunged 27% during the first five months.

Home prices also declined in the first quarter by the most since Germany's statistics office began keeping data, down 6.8% from a year earlier.

In September, data will show to what extent the trend is continuing and shed light on the state of construction jobs.

"The current crisis will certainly continue for a while yet," said Sven Carstensen, chief executive of Bulwiengesa, a property consultant and analysis firm.

WHAT'S BEHIND THE SLUMP?

The main factor has been a sudden and rapid rise in interest rates by the European Central Bank as it clamps down on the highest inflation rates in decades, but there's more to it.

Building costs have also soared, and the demand for offices and retail space has waned after the pandemic. The Ukraine war has also made German property seem riskier for foreign investors.

"If you are an investor from the Middle East, Germany seems to be quite close to Ukraine. They say, 'I want to allocate money to the US and Asia and not to Germany,'" said Florian Schwalm, a consultant with EY.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Germany, whose population has recently grown as millions of migrants and refugees from Ukraine flock to the country, aims to build 400,000 apartments a year but is struggling with its goals.

Politicians, ministries and the property industry will convene with Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sept. 25 to try to find solutions, and some are already jockeying with proposals to rejuvenate the sector.

WHAT ARE THE IDEAS?

Last week, Klara Geywitz, Germany's housing minister, called for additional tax breaks for writing off the costs of construction for new residential buildings.

The president of the German Property Federation, Andreas Mattner, is pressing the government to temporarily suspend a property sales tax and is demanding a low-interest rate credit program to support new residential building.

Tim-Oliver Mueller, head of the German Construction Industry Federation, is pushing for an emergency package of measures that would include the cut-price sale of public land for building rentals.

By Jarrett Renshaw

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The Biden administration moved on Tuesday to boost wages and worker protections on federally funded construction projects, drawing the ire of trade groups that warn the union-friendly changes could curtail investment.

Vice President Kamala Harris celebrated the new labor reforms at a Philadelphia union hall, calling the administration unapologetically pro-union.

"When union wages go up, everyone's wages go up. When unions are strong, America is strong," she said, adding that the policies would give workers a "raise."

The trip marks the latest in a string of visits by U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration to the electoral battleground state of Pennsylvania to court unions, a core constituency of his Democratic Party even as many rank-and-file members favor Republicans.

By making changes to a 1930s law, the Labor Department seeks to boost wages and protections as the federal government spends billions of dollars on new roads and bridges, and expanding industries like computer chips and green energy.

The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 tasks the government with establishing wage floors - known as prevailing wages - that apply to construction projects funded by the federal government. Today, it applies to more than one million construction workers on $200 billion of such projects, the administration said.

Biden ordered the review of the labor law early in his administration. It will become effective in roughly 60 days.

Trade groups have long criticized the prevailing wage requirements, saying they discourage small businesses from seeking federal contracts.

The rule changes the way prevailing wages are calculated, basing them on the average wages paid to at least 30% of local workers, instead of the 50% threshold set in 1983. That raises the wage the government can set because they can eliminate more lower-wage workers from the calculation.

The Labor Department must currently periodically survey contractors and other parties to update wage rates, but will now be able to adopt prevailing wages determined by local governments, issue wage determinations for jobs when data is lacking and update outdated wage rates.

The change will add a new anti-retaliation provision to protect workers who raise concerns and strengthens the government's ability to withhold money from a contractor in order to pay employees their lost wages.

"This is yet another Biden administration handout to organized labor on the backs of taxpayers, small businesses and the free market," said Associated Builders and Contractors official Ben Brubeck.

Biden won 57% of union households nationwide in the 2020 election compared with 40% for Trump, according to Edison Research.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's household borrowing grew in July for a fourth straight month and by the biggest amount in almost two years, central bank data showed on Wednesday, amid mounting worries by policymakers.

Total borrowing from banks increased by 6.0 trillion won ($4.55 billion) to stand at a fresh record high of 1,068.1 trillion won at the end of July, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK).

It was bigger than the monthly increase of 5.8 trillion won in June and the biggest since September 2021.

Growth in mortgage loans eased to 6.0 trillion won from 6.9 trillion won the previous month, but the fall in other loans softened to a marginal 0.01 trillion won from 1.2 trillion won.

There was some demand for stock investment, contributing to higher borrowing, and seasonal factors at the start of the second half of the year, a BOK official told a briefing.

South Korea's central bank held interest rates steady for a fourth straight meeting last month, but the board members kept the door open for further tightening, expressing concern about rising household debts among others.

The country's financial regulator said in a separate statement that it would prepare a pre-emptive measure for stable management of household debts in the second half, if deemed necessary.

($1 = 1,318.4400 won)