The Wirecard AG scandal could spark a revamp of how the European Union carries out financial supervision, top official Valdis Dombrovskis told the Financial Times, Bloomberg News reported. The German tech company’s collapse shows that previous attempts to bolster financial watchdogs in Brussels were a “missed opportunity” and need another push, according to Dombrovskis, the European Commission’s executive vice-president for economic policy. “We are looking at how we can strengthen the system to avoid that kind of situation happening again,” he said in an FT report published Sunday.

Emerging-market stocks and currencies are within touching distance of erasing their pandemic-fueled losses of 2020, Bloomberg News reported. Too bad the virus is still running riot, economies are shrinking and central banks are getting low on firepower. In fact, the backdrop is so grim that investors may soon start to take the view that prices are starting to defy gravity. After falling more than 30% by March, developing-nation stocks as measured by MSCI Inc.’s benchmark index are just 3% below the level at which they started the year.

NatWest became the latest in a string of British banks to report a sharp jump in provisions to absorb an expected surge in bad debts due to the worsening outlook for the UK economy, the Financial Times reported. The company, formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland, reported a £2.1bn impairment charge for the second quarter, more than twice the size of its first-quarter provision. NatWest’s impairment charge pushed it to a £1.3bn pre-tax loss for the three months to June, compared with a £1.7bn profit in the same period last year.

When Santander entered the UK in 2004 with the acquisition of former building society Abbey National, the move completed the group’s transformation from a family-run regional mortgage lender into a multinational giant, the Financial Times reported. At the time Europe’s largest cross-border banking deal, the acquisition marked the culmination of a string of acquisitions under its swashbuckling “presidente” Emilio Botín, whose family have controlled Banco Santander since the early 20th century.

Noble Corp., the offshore drilling contractor, filed for bankruptcy with a plan to cut more than $3.4 billion of debt after a crash in crude prices made undersea oil wells too expensive, Bloomberg News reported. The Chapter 11 filing in Texas would eliminate all of the company’s bond borrowings by swapping debt for equity, the company said in a statement. Noteholders agreed to invest $200 million of new capital through second-lien notes, and Noble has lined up a $675 million secured revolving credit facility backed by current lenders including JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Intesa Sanpaolo’s victorious battle for rival UBI has sent shockwaves through Italy’s fragile banking sector as financiers try and work out who will be next in an industry ripe for consolidation, Reuters reported. The unsolicited bid, Europe’s largest banking deal in a decade, has set the stage for further mergers in the fragmented sector as pandemic-induced losses mount, adding to lenders’ existing struggles with negative interest rates and the need to adapt to a fast-changing digital world.

Germany’s gross domestic product shrank at the fastest pace in half a century in the second quarter of 2020, according to preliminary data that confirm the depth of the recession in Europe’s largest economy, the Financial Times reported. GDP contracted 10.1 per cent quarter-on-quarter, the largest decline since quarterly calculations began in 1970 — and far bigger than the fall at the height of the global financial crisis, the national statistical agency said on Tuesday.

The end of the government’s furlough scheme in October looms large for all of UK business. For retail and hospitality companies, another deadline is just as chilling: the end of the one-year “holiday” on business rates next March, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Since rates are linked to rental values dating from 2015 — and a revaluation has just been postponed — shop chains could snap back into paying a hefty levy based on rents calculated long before Covid-19 devastated their businesses.

Lloyds Banking Group is preparing for a surge in customer defaults, after Britain’s largest retail bank warned that the coronavirus crisis had inflicted more damage on the economy than it had expected, the Financial Times reported. The bank’s shares tumbled more than 7 per cent on Thursday to their lowest level in eight years after the lender set aside another £2.4bn to cover future bad loans and slumped to a second-quarter loss.

Moody's Investors Service (Moody's) has today downgraded RussNeft PJSC's (RussNeft) corporate family rating (CFR) to Caa2 from Caa1 and probability of default rating (PDR) to Caa3-PD from Caa1-PD. RussNeft's outlook remains negative,Yahoo! Finance reported.