Croatian food company Fortenova Grupa, the Balkan region’s biggest firm by sales, is preparing to issue a four-year bond worth up to 1.2 billion euros ($1.35 billion), it said on Friday, Reuters reported. The bond is aimed at financing a 1.1 billion euro liquidity loan the firm, formerly known as Agrokor, took out two years ago to avoid bankruptcy, it said in a statement. That followed an expansion drive based on high and expensive debt. “The interest rate will be 7.3% plus Euribor,” Fortenova said.

France has launched a long-awaited and highly contentious overhaul of its pension system, setting up another battle between labour unions and President Emmanuel Macron, who is trying to push ahead with his reform agenda following months of anti-government protests, the Financial Times reported.

It's been barely 24 hours since Ursula von der Leyen was confirmed as the next head of the European Commission and EU capitals are already engaged in diplomatic manoeuvres to fill another top job, the Financial Times reported. At stake is the International Monetary Fund, which will need a new managing director now that Christine Lagarde is leaving to become the next president of the European Central Bank on November 1.

British media company Reach Plc said on Thursday it was in the early stages of discussions to buy certain assets of JPI Media, which publishes the Yorkshire Post and the Scotsman. Shares of Reach, which publishes Daily Mirror, jumped as much as 9% after the news, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. By 0919 GMT, the stock handed back some of those gains and were up 4.7% at 84.65 pence. Johnston Press, later renamed JPI Media, was bought by its bondholders last year after it filed for bankruptcy protection.

Senior officials from Greece's creditor institutions are meeting in Athens with the country's new conservative government, which is planning to begin dismantling bailout-era taxes next month, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story. Representatives of the European Commission, European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and a eurozone rescue fund were holding meetings Thursday with at least five cabinet ministers, government officials said.

As negative yields engulf everything from Brazil’s state oil company to Hungarian sovereign debt to euro junk, investors are seeking refuge in high-yield bond ETFs, Bloomberg News reported. Europe-listed funds have attracted over 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion) since January, more than in any full year going back to at least 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. The largest exchange-traded fund tracking the debt -- BlackRock Inc.’s 8.5 billion-euro IHYG -- took in 640 million euros in the week ended July 5, smashing a record it set just two weeks before, the data show.

Online fashion retailer Asos warned profits would be more than a third lower than expected this year due to a botched warehouse upgrade that limited the availability of stock to shoppers in the US and Europe, the Financial Times reported. The group’s share price dropped by nearly a quarter early on Thursday as it said pre-tax profit would be about £30m-£35m in 2019, compared with the more than £55m forecast by analysts.

A no-deal Brexit could plunge the British economy into a yearlong recession, hammer the pound and house prices and add tens of billions of pounds to government borrowing, according to the U.K fiscal watchdog, Bloomberg News reported. The Office for Budget Responsibility analysis is based on the “less disruptive” of two no-deal Brexit scenarios modeled by the International Monetary Fund in April. “Heightened uncertainty and declining confidence deter investment, while higher trade barriers with the EU weigh on exports,” the OBR said in its fiscal risks report published Thursday.

Loans to Venezuela from President Nicolas Maduro’s allies Russia and China would be renegotiated though the Paris Club if Maduro leaves power, an advisor to the opposition said on Wednesday, responding to concerns about favourable treatment for the two countries, Reuters reported. Ricardo Hausmann, who represents opposition leader Juan Guaido at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), said Guaido’s team has not determined how loans might be restructured under its governance because bilateral debt talks typically take place under the auspices of the Paris Club creditor group.

Foreign investors have ended their near-boycott of Ukrainian local currency government debt, returning en masse in recent months amid an improving political and economic backdrop, the Financial Times reported. Just 1.6 per cent of Ukraine’s hryvnia-denominated sovereign bonds were held by foreign investors in December, in the wake of a series of calamities that had seen the currency ship 70 per cent of its value against the dollar since the start of 2014.